Tokmanni Group Stock

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Tokmanni Group's half year financial review and this webcast. My name is Sampo Päällysaho, and I have started in this position as a group CEO July 6. Of course, it's my fifth week, which we are closing today together. During my first weeks, I had the privilege to visit our stores and DCs here in Finland as well as in Sweden and in Denmark. It gave me a good understanding how do the stores, markets and customers look like. And of course, that will be also one part of my presentation today, and it has been noted in the release earlier today as well.

Our today's agenda, like usually, is actually covering Q2 in brief, our key figures and performance and as well our view about the future. We are closing the session together with questions and answers. By the way, this photo is from Sotkamo, which I took on Tuesday this week. This store is actually started to be renewed, and it will have one of the Everest pay stores in the near future.

When we look today at Tokmanni Group of companies, we do see that we have a strong footprint here in Finland, while we have 208 Tokmanni stores, 34 Click Shoes stores. And when we look further to Sweden and Denmark, we can see that Dollar store already has today 142 stores. And it is a remarkable store network from south to north. And we have entered to Denmark, where we today have 12 big Dollar stores. Out of those 12 stores, I have already had a chance to visit 10 stores, both from Copenhagen to and also the central part and northern part of Finland.

In this slide, it's remarkable to say that our shared product is already today 6,700 compared to previous figure, 2,800. And we can see that this common offer is well introduced in all markets. We can also see that our private label share grew from 25.1% up to 26.3%. And this is also something which I consider a big step in our assortment and offer. When we look ahead about from this map, we can also see that we are almost reaching 400 stores in Nordics, out of which 242 in Finland, 154 in Dollar Store segment, which then covers Sweden and Denmark. On the bottom right corner, you will also see that in Q2 compared to previous, we have opened 5 new stores. Tokmanni Group as a group of companies and consolidated performance is also something which we wanted to share this morning.

Our revenue grew by 3.3%, up to EUR 457.7 million. And this is actually thanks to low price program in all markets as well as good successes in spring and summer season. Sales has been increasing in both segments, Tokmanni as well as Dollar stores, and this is thanks to higher footfall and higher average basket size. And we do see that our comparable EBIT is in line with the comparison period. Of course, you also see a modest decline. And this is, of course -- this is because of Dollar Store segment's operating expenses increased, and they increased due to the new store openings and ongoing various development projects. Cash flow for the quarter was EUR 45.7 million. When we look to Tokmanni segment, it's also a pleasure to present the figures from Finland saying that revenue continued to grow.

Revenue grew up to EUR 329.6 million, which also means 2.3%. Like mentioned earlier, customer visits continued to grow. And this is also what we can see that customers are looking for a value-for-money shopping approach, which Tokmanni gives a strong position and strong opportunity. Seasonal demand, especially garden products supported our revenue growth. And what we can see when we see the market comparison, our non-grocery products, especially apparels continued to grow faster than the market in general. We can see that our digitalization gives us a room further improvement. This is actually getting to know the customer even better, giving tools to the employees and decision-making is strongly supported by data-driven information, which also gives a further improvement in operational development.

Our customer loyalty club, Tokmanni Klubi, grew in Finland. Now already today, we have 1.6 million registered members. These members for us are actually really valuable. They visit our stores more often and they also buy more. So of course, we are willing to develop Klubi even further. In Finland, our operating cost -- operating expenses were very well in control. And we can do -- we do see that our comparable EBIT continued to grow, additional EUR 1.5 million up to EUR 22.3 million as a sum. And of course, this is something which we should be all proud of.

Let's have a look for the next title in my presentation. When we look to Finland, of course, it's also with a curiosity to follow how EUROSPAR is performing. And already today, we have opened 6 stores according to our plans, and we are continuing to open new stores. Those new stores will be actually vital from our perspective because then we have more than -- we are actually reaching 10 or even 11 stores by the end of the year, which gives us a room to study about the development activities. But as well, we do see that these EUROSPAR stores have actually given a chance for the stores to grow in footfall and also in average basket.

This week, I also visited Esalmi store, which is Northeast Finland, and the store actually was really ready to meet the customers. And one of the products which I could see customers came to seek were hamburgers. Hamburgers are sort of a well-known product according to EUROSPAR concept. And we've been treating people in Esalmi, especially during the lunch hours with a huge amount of hamburgers sold.

Looking back to Sweden and returning back to Sweden and Denmark, we also can see that revenue grew pretty strong, 7.7%, up to 130.2%. And also, we can see that the common assortment gives us a top line sales growth and the sales actually grew, especially in drinks, coffee, toys, party, and I would be saying barbecuing, even though in my slide, it says grilling. And these were actually well treated by the customers as well our common campaigns, which have taken place every second week in Sweden as well as in Denmark.

And the common assortment, we have now taken up to 6,700 SKUs, which is a strong evidence from the customer perception, but as well also from the procurement perspective that this is the right way to take the action steps also in upcoming months and assortment periods. And our pilot stores, which we were mentioning in the report, one in Jüterbog, that's called Coler, and second store in Westerhus called Erikslund are both well treated by the customers. I have had a chance to visit both of these stores, and I can see that the stores are highly maintained in a good commercial level, employees really willing to meet the customers and customer baskets are big, which is, of course, good news from our perspective.

Our comparable EBIT, though declined during Q2 in Dollarstore segment. And like mentioned earlier, this is mainly due to investments made for the new store openings as well as development initiatives, which are -- which increased the operating expenses. Pretty soon, Tapio, as our CFO, will be also coming here. And when we were preparing this presentation for you, we actually thought that it will be essential to share with you that during past 12 months, we have opened 11 stores. These 11 stores actually have contributed positively to our revenue and EBIT impact has been neutral, which is also good news as a retailer who has entered into a Swedish and Danish retail market.

Those stores opened in Sweden being 8, additional 3 stores opened in Denmark are such, of course, which have been partially done at the early stages with the old store format. But when we look to the latest store openings, such as Kiruna and Helsingborg Valla, they already have the extended assortment. And therefore, we also treat and follow them with a high interest. And especially in Kiruna, we can see that the store coverage area is wide because we are there with another retailers in the same retail park and people in Northern Sweden are actually visiting this shopping mall or retail park with a high interest.

When the store was opened, huge queues took place. And of course, now when the summer season is ending, we have a high interest to see what will be our store coverage area. I assume it will be more than an hour's drive to the store. It might be up to 90 minutes.

What else? I do see that these stores, actually, all the photos what we have here, I have taken personally during my trips. And I can actually see that we are well known. We have a pretty nice -- we had a nice footfall during the summertime and all kind of people were visiting us. It might have been mom and daughter. It might have been a worker. It might have been in the whole family. And in many cases, people were still having a summer holiday mode. So people were also buying all seasonal articles, not only in Finland, but as well as in Sweden and in Denmark.

In the previous quarterly reviews, Mika, as my predecessor and Tapio have been talking about Dollarstore turnaround. And I think it's good for you to know where are we today. And we really can see that the concept and assortment renewal has actually boosted our top line sales. And the pilot stores, especially Collard and Erikslund are showing even higher performance. When we look to the marketing efforts, instead of just opening the stores, we are also inviting customers to visit our stores, which has highly increased our footfall and campaign effectiveness.

Common assortment makes really sense while we can see that it brings in sourcing efficiencies, but it also gives us a further improvement for gross margin in the near future. Like-for-like customer visits turned positive in June. And our basket grew by 4.2%, and that's dollar store segment, meaning Sweden and then Denmark. As further we look, it is essential that we continue to work with harmonized systems, harmonized processes, ways of working, which also brings us a good understanding how we can support from Finland our operations in Sweden and in Denmark, but also vice versa. We are definitely learning about the seasonalities, and we are also learning that it's not only 4 seasons like in Finland, Southern part of Finland, Southern part of Sweden as well as Denmark hardly have any winter nowadays, which we also need to balance in the upcoming seasons.

When I look to Sweden and store network development, I also want to highlight that we have started and we will actually concentrate that each and every store in Sweden will concentrate for productivity and profitability. When we are opening new stores in Sweden, we will pay attention that they are -- they have a good match to our existing store network, and we also give them a room to improve. But necessity to point out, productivity and profitability in each and every store in Sweden. We also do see that there's a room for further room to open new stores in Denmark, which we are also taking into our agenda. opposite direction.

Now this is the slide which I was looking after. It's actually the leaflets, which I have carried in my backpack to Finland. It shows well that we have a common leaflet procedure. And why do we have a common leaflet procedure? We also have a common steering for commercial calendar. This commercial calendar takes into account common seasonalities in each market, but it's essential that we also pay attention for the local seasonalities because markets do differ. When there's a common season, it can be sourced together, it can be negotiated together. we can have the volume and logistics together, giving us a room to have the even more competitive retail pricing, but further to improve our gross margin in each and every store as well in each and every market. And this procedure is definitely giving us a good figures already today and in upcoming weeks.

Now I think it's time for Tapio to join me. And when you join me, I have chosen you a photo. This photo is from Fredrikhaven in Denmark. It's yours. So here you are.

Excellent. Thank you, Sampo. So good morning on my behalf as well. So let's go through the numbers a little bit more in detail. So as Sampo mentioned, we had good growth in the quarter with total group revenue growing by 3.3%. And if you take into account, especially the fact that last year, Easter was in the second quarter and this year, most of the Easter sales, of course, occurred during the first quarter, this growth was actually very good. And the total revenue added up to EUR 457.7 million.

Also, our like-for-like revenue grew by 0.3%, which is always great to see. And our comparable gross profit also increased albeit slightly to EUR 158.5 million, and our comparable gross margin declined slightly to 34.6%. And as Sampo already mentioned, our comparable EBIT was pretty much on par with last year at EUR 21 million. And our cash flow for the quarter was also very good at EUR 45.7 million. And if you remember, last year, we had an exceptionally good cash flow in the second quarter due to the very poor cash flow last year in the first quarter. So the EUR 45.7 million, although EUR 30 million less than last year is actually a very good level in itself as well.

Then looking at the revenue composition. So of course, Tokmanni segment still makes up a large majority of the revenue. And there, we had a revenue increase of 2.3% in the Tokmanni segment. And the Dollarstore segment's revenue increased by 6.4% in local currencies. So that's about a percentage, a little bit more or less than in euro terms and reached EUR 130.2 million. Then when we look at our product mix, so in the Tokmanni segment, the product mix was essentially flat compared to a year ago at 54.4% of groceries and non-groceries at 45.6%. Whereas in DollarStore during the second quarter, the share of groceries grew slightly from a year ago. And that was really driven by the fact, if you remember, we were talking about the introduction of, let's say, new products into Dollarstore segment during the second quarter, and a lot of those were actually grocery products and high sellers. So that definitely helped our sales in the grocery side of DollarStore during the second quarter, hence, the increase.

When you look at our private labels, also there, very positive development. And this was again very much driven by the fact that on the Dollar Store side, the Tokmanni Group private label sales increased, and that's again driven by the common assortment. Like Sampo mentioned, it was over 6,000 during the second quarter, up from slightly below 3,000 a year ago. And you can see our private labels there. We have many private labels that we take good care of.

Then when we look at our gross profit. So in the second quarter, we managed to increase our absolute gross profit by EUR 800,000 to EUR 158.5 million. And this is, of course, important because it is the absolute gross profit that then pays for all our bills. So even though the comparable gross margin declined slightly, we are still very happy that we had a positive gross profit development during the second quarter. And also, if you look at it on a half year basis, we managed to increase the gross profit by a little bit more than EUR 5 million during the first half. So good news, but of course, the gross profit margin or gross margin declined slightly, and that's really due to the campaigning that we have been doing during the second quarter, this cheapest in Finland and also similar campaigns in Sweden and Denmark, They, of course, have helped the footfall and sales, but been, of course, slightly negative impact on the gross profit margin.

Then on our operating expenses. So as Sampo said, we've had good control of our operating expenses, and I'm very happy to note that also in Dollarstore now we managed to decrease the ratio of comparable operating expenses to sales. And this is, let's say, a very good trend that we plan to continue also in the future. So growing the sales, of course, means that we can see this declining trend as we control the OpEx very carefully. And the personnel expenses, 14.1% of revenue, and you can see actually a slight decline to a year ago. And this is also noting that we have, in fact, 11 more stores than we had a year ago.

And also, we've had the, let's say, statutory raises last year in the second quarter. So those combined, the efficiency or the slight reduction in personnel expenses is coming from the operating efficiency steps we have taken during the past 12 months, especially in the store operations, but also, of course, in the logistics and warehouses. And also, we've been very careful with the head office staff as well. And on the Tokmanni segment side, the comparable operating expenses declined by 1.2 percentage points of revenue. That's a very significant decline. And actually, they are now on the level of Q2 2023. And on the Dollarstore side, still clearly higher, but again, down from a year ago to 26% of revenue and totaling EUR 33.8 million. So a growth of EUR 2 million or EUR 1.9 million to be exact. And that, again, given the fact that we have, I think, 8 new stores in the Dollar Store segment. So a very good result there as well.

Then looking at our comparable EBIT. So again, the group EBIT pretty much flat compared to a year ago at EUR 21 million. And Tokmanni segment managed to improve clearly our EBIT from a year ago to EUR 22.3 million, and the EBIT margin also improved to 6.8 percentage points during the second quarter. Whereas in DollarStore, even though we did see very positive signs, especially towards the end of the quarter, driven by the increase in the assortment that we did. We were still clearly below last year, so EUR 2 million below last year, and the EBIT margin was slightly negative at 0.3% for Dollarstore segment.

Then our inventory management. And obviously, inventory is our largest asset if you exclude the IFRS 16 lease agreements. So we've been able to take very good care of that also during this quarter. And the total value of inventory is about EUR 20 million less than a year ago. Of course, you need to remember that, that does include the extra EUR 12 million inventory write-down that we did for Dollarstore that is not included in the comparable figures. But even if you add that back, we're still below last year's level. And if you look at the, let's say, figures, you can see that, let's say, over the past 6 quarters, we have seen a sort of declining trend in the total inventory, which is, of course, we're very happy with that trend, and that obviously helps also very much with the cash flow.

And on the Tokmanni side, again, we are EUR 16 million below in inventory, and that's a very good achievement and the total inventory value was EUR 312.3 million. And on Dollar Store side, it is also below last year, but again, that is including the EUR 12 million write-down. So excluding that, it will be some EUR 10 million above last year. But still, if you take into account all the increase in the assortment and the new stores, it's a pretty decent achievement.

Looking at our financing. Again, a large part of our total net debt is this IFRS 16 lease agreements. But if you look at the, let's say, the bank loans and the existing bond, we have been able to -- over the last 5 quarters, we've been able to quite steadily pay down the actual bank debt and the combination with the bond loan. So it peaked in the first quarter of 2025 at EUR 365.3 million. And now we're down to below EUR 300 million of that debt at EUR 293.4 million. And of course, as we continue to expand, the lease liabilities continues to creep up. So we are at the moment at EUR 617.7 million in the lease liabilities.

Then our net debt to comparable EBITDA, which is our only bank covenant. We are, let's say, managing it quite well in my mind. And at the moment, the EBIT -- or the net debt comparable EBITDA, including the IFRS 16 lease liabilities is 4.11%, and excluding 3.6%. And if you remember, our long-term target, which is to keep that ratio below 2.25 at year-end. Of course, there's still some way to go, but I do see that we will be quite close to that figure. We might not quite get there, but we will be very, very close to that figure in any case.

Then about our cash flow. As mentioned, the first quarter cash flow was quite good. If you, let's say, last year was quite exceptional due to the first quarter poor performance. And if you look at it on a half year basis, you can see that we're still clearly ahead of last year and the year before that at EUR 31.9 million of positive cash flow for the first quarter. And that's a very good result. And again, that has been driven by the efficient management of net working capital, both the accounts payable as well as the inventories, obviously.

Then finally, my part concludes with the capital expenditure. And as you can see here, we have about EUR 8.2 million in the second quarter of capital expenditure, well in line with last year. And also, if you look at the first half in total, EUR 13.6 million in total. And we are well on track to, let's say, reach roughly the EUR 30 million, give or take, a few million in capital expenditure for the full year.

So with that, I invite Sampo back on stage to talk a little bit about the plans going forward.

Thanks, Tapio. Pleasure to see you presenting the figures. When we look ahead, I think you have already changed my slide, which is good. It is actually really, really important to see that the actions taken already first half of this calendar year and second quarter has been delivering higher footfall, stronger average basket as well as you can see, we have stores in a pretty good or even in excellent commercial shape, which gives us a really steady situation to continue. We have stores, we have commercial standards. We have employees who are willing to meet these customers. And that's from my perspective as a retailer is a strong statement.

No matter if you go to northern part of Finland, central part of Sweden, middle part of Denmark. These are the concept criterias they should be filing. Nice to visit. You tend to have a shopping list, but you also bought something more. And that makes us as a retailer happy. One of the topics which we have pointed out and sent a separate release also this morning concerns cooperation with SPAR. Last week, I had the privilege to meet our counterparts in Netherlands. And we can really see that there's a fruitful discussion and the real retail understanding in Netherlands, which is in our advantage.

SPAR has multiple store concepts, and we have decided to work under E-SPAR trademark. That concerns Finland. In Finland, we have already introduced approximately 200 SKUs of different SPAR private label products. And starting latter part of the autumn, we will be introducing SPAR products also in Sweden. And when we do that one, actually, we also will be increasing frequency for a customer visit instead of only having the seasonalities, investment articles but we also will be bringing in products like you see here, spaghetti or Olive oil, which you need on a weekly basis. And this will be actually something very big for our Dollar store operation as well. Clamming has started, and I would be saying before the Christmas trade or even hopefully already October, November, these SKUs will be launched and introduced for the Swedish customers.

When we look to the top sellers in Finland, of course, it's granulated sugar. It's a quality pasta. It's biscuits, hand soap, canned tuna overseas as well as chocolate products. These are not in the volume order. They are just in a sudden order, but I would be saying that Finnish customers tend to buy these products on a weekly and biweekly basis. photo on this slide is one of the most tiny distribution centers. It's from pro. And I'm really proud to see how our DC operations in Määa as well as pro are driven. We have highly skilled people, highly driven efficiency, but also we have happy employees. And this is something which gives us a room to take additional action steps.

When we have DC and our value chain in our hand, we can also work on customers' behalf. We are there to provide low prices, wide assortment and easy shopping experience, no matter in which store, in which country you are visiting our stores. Our preparations for Christmas trade are well progressing and autumn trade is already here. Next week, schools are starting in Finland or has even started in central part of Finland this week. And same applies to Sweden and Denmark. And it's really important that we are ready to meet the young boys and girls who are entering to the school who want to buy the accessories, but also are looking for a backpack.

We have a continued focus on strengthening the market positions for Tokmanni, Dollar Store and Big Dollar. At today, we do not see that the geopolitical uncertainty would be making any hurdles for us. We have a good position when it concerns product availability, maintaining supply chain, and we are well upfront with the seasonal preparations. So from that perspective, we don't see any clouds in the skies. We rather see a pretty bright skies from our sake. We have also started our strategy process. And this strategy process involves all of our 3 markets.

And it's also important for me that it's not only the executive management team working in this manner. We are involving our markets. And in 2 weeks' time, no, in 1.5 weeks' time, we are also meeting with our leaders here in Finland, and it's actually a group of 80, even 90 persons gathering together, seeing where we are today, what kind of challenges we have had, what do we want to achieve. And then we are really rolling our strategy process, which we will be sharing with you then later, not yet in August or in September. Did we have something else to mention here?

[indiscernible] Thanks.

Then let's move ahead. Yes, good. Also, we are delighted to inform that we have new members joining group's executive team. Ulrika, a Swedish citizen, is joining us already first of September. Ulrika will take a role as a Strategy and Transformation Officer. And in the past, she has worked, for example, for OKQ8 as well as Mekonomen, and I know her well from the Clas Ohlson times. And we are really welcoming her to take over this really important role, not only for the strategy process, but also executing, implementing and following that the most important milestones will be fulfilled.

We are also inviting Martin to join us. Martin will take over role as a Managing Director for Dollar Store's Tech segment, meaning Sweden and Denmark, and he will be joining us from Flying Tiger. He will be here on the 1st of November onwards. With these 2 new members, we are actually also in a milestone from the Finnish sake. Instead of having a Finnish as a language spoken, it also means that we are shifting into English in the group's executive team. Both Ulrika and Martin will have their offices in Kista. But at the same time, I do believe that especially Ulrika will be visiting headquarters in Mäenlä, if not on a weekly basis, on a biweekly basis. Will you take the guidance or shall I take it?

You can take it.

I can take it. Okay. As noted already, we do keep our guidance for 2026 unchanged. We do expect our revenue to be in between EUR 1.78 billion to EUR 1.8 EUR 1.78 billion. Isn't that correct? Yes. Good. And comparable EBIT, we also expect to be in between EUR 85 million to EUR 105 million. And closing this session being prepared for the Q&A, you can also see the Klubi sign, which I mentioned earlier, 1.6 million members, registered members already here in Finland, which makes us happy.

Time for a Q&A. Please raise your hand, and we will try to give a momentum for each and every one of you. I can see that Arttu Heikura, you are the first one. So please.

It's Arttu Heikura from Inderes. Nice to meet you, Sampo, for the first time. And I have a few questions. First off, can you quantify how large was the impact of Easter to your revenue growth in Q2?

Yes, it's not -- there's, of course, not exact science. There's weather and everything else, but we estimate it to be between 1 and 2 percentage points in the, let's say, shift between Q1 and Q2. But as I said, again, there's no scientific right answer there, but that's the best estimate we have.

All right. And I guess that your plans on expanding the Swedish network has somewhat changed. So how many stores are you planning to open in Sweden during the next few years?

It's a really good question. Annual planning for '27 has started. And if I give you a precise figure, it's not the reality. I can see that our store network today is fulfilling most of the populated cities and towns in Sweden. And therefore, I was also saying that any new store in Sweden needs to be carefully calculated because we do not have a situation that we open a store next to already existing store and the cannibalization effect turns to be too big. There will be new stores, but limited amount of new stores in Sweden.

Okay. And then a question about the Dollar stores concept and assortment renewal program. And compared to your previous plans, how you made -- have you made some changes in the amount or characteristics of SKUs that you will be renewed in the Dollar Store?

Thanks, Arttu. I think the biggest topic in the presentation today was actually to show that we have gained already 6,700 common SKUs in between segments, which gives us a room to improve logistics, room to improve purchasing terms and also room to improve gross margin, not only in Dollar Store segment, but also in Finland. When we look for the periods behind and upcoming seasonal periods, there is a clear plan to introduce new SKUs also now during the autumn time in Sweden. It might be small domestic appliances or electric articles. It might be SPAR products, like mentioned earlier. And yes, it will be hundreds of new SKUs for this autumn time. And third wave also taking place right after the Christmas trade. So already today, in the existing climate, our assortment in Sweden is the widest when we compare us to another variety discount retailers. And we will make it as our competitive advantage in Sweden.

And are you planning to do this in the all Dollarstore stores?

Yes, at least partially, Art. There might be a situation where there's an even wider assortment in chosen stores, but each and every store will be asking and will be requiring new SKUs to be better in the -- to meet our customer expectations.

Okay. Then a question regarding Dollarstore inventory write-downs. What kind of products have you or you will be write down? And yes, that was my question.

The write-down is really -- it's a one-off item, and it really allows us to, let's say, going forward, allows us to show the, let's say, true underlying profitability because as Sampo said, we are introducing a lot of new SKUs. And therefore, we have to clear out some of the old stuff as well. So when we clear that old stuff out, whether just probably not removing that much, but it's mostly selling in a very low price to get rid of it or maybe even selling to some third parties part of that. But whatever we decide to do, then we can use the let's say, EUR 12 million write-off to offset that so that we can show the, let's say, underlying profitability going forward for Dollarstore.

Yes. And then what gives you confidence in achieving the current guidance given that your EBIT is approximately EUR 3 million behind last year and the Dollarstore like-for-like footfall was still in decline.

Will you take that one, Tapio?

I can take it and you can fill that. I can start. Of course, we have several positive signs both in the general economy as well as in our own operations. So when we did the, let's say, enlargement in the May time frame of the Dollarstore assortment, we clearly saw a pickup in sales, and that gives us confidence that the more we add to the product assortment, the more sales we can generate from the same amount of customers. Also, we've been doing a lot of marketing activities in Dollarstore trying out different things, whether it's radio commercials or the leaflet and so on. So that has resulted in improved footfall.

And also, as Sampo said, the basket size at Dollarstore has clearly increased. So we do see several levers that are pushing up the sales, which, again, is the #1 thing we need to improve in the Dollar stores is the sales per square meter or sales per store, whatever you use the metric, but that's the key thing we're trying to achieve, so increase the sales of the existing store network. So we do have positive signs there. And also in Finland, we do see positive signs in general economy also people might be willing to spend a little bit more. So you see that in the marketplace with, for example, the K Group now doing slightly better than the S Group, and that's really showing that consumers are willing to spend a bit more money. Of course, it's good for us as well that consumers are willing to spend more. So we plan to take more than our fair share of the wallet sort of opening for consumers.

I think my last question -- yes, please. Go ahead. Go ahead.

No, I was just about to say that I'm not going to fulfill anything more because you also took the Finland into account. And that 1 I was curiously following that. You also remember our biggest market and segment in this discussion.

So Art, you have 1 more question, please.

Yes. My last question is regarding Tokmanni segment. And do you still see room to improve segment's fixed cost structure during the H2?

As noted, we had a tight cost control for Q2 -- and of course, we are following the performance, while it's a necessity that we actually run the top line, strengthen the gross margin and also have a tight OpEx control. And it's especially in the momentum where we've been opening new SPAR stores to see that the footfall is growing and at the same time, visit frequency is growing. This combined, we expect also to fulfill the guidance question from your perspective.

Thank you so much. Next, who has raised his hand is Joonas. Joonas, please.

It's Joonas from OP. A couple of questions regarding the gross margins in each of the countries. So firstly, in Finland, gross margin weakened apparently due to campaigning, even though sales of seasonal products increased. Can you comment how was the margin in seasonal products this year versus last year? And maybe overall, what type of products or product groups were sold through campaigns, groceries, non-groceries or both? And perhaps also what kind of expectations do you have for the Finnish gross margin in the second half?

If we take the Q2, and like I mentioned, we were happy to see that the non-grocery items and non-grocery categories actually continued to grow. And in those categories also, we have a stronger margin, of course, than in grocery or fast-moving consumer goods. And therefore, it's an essential part from our businesses that we are extremely good and we meet our customer requirements in those categories. And that gives us a room for the further gross margin percentage improvement. When we take the gross margin in euros, we have also used grocery products to bring in customers. And of course, when we are saying Swam and Halloween as a campaign title, those Swam and Halloween articles are both important from the branding perspective, important for the customer promise, but important for also our customers who are seeking for the cheapest possible articles and cheapest possible buying positions. And from that perspective, it's constant balancing in between seasonalities, in between footfall and also successful Swam and Halloween campaign. Did you have something else, Joonas?

Yes. Maybe another question regarding Dollarstore's gross margin that weakened also in the second quarter. So how was the campaigning level in Dollarstore in the second quarter versus last year? And did you still have clearance sales related to Dollarstore's old inventory? What was the main driver for the?

Yes. So again, we did introduce, for example, dry goods, dry foods in the second quarter. And we had, let's say, quite heavy campaigning on, for example, drinks and dry foods. So that obviously drives down the margin a little bit. Also, you saw the grocery part increasing at DollarStore from a year ago. So that has also an impact the mix. As Sampo said, the gross margins on the fast-moving consumer goods are, of course, clearly lower than on non-grocery products. So I would say those 2 were a mix or were the main factors driving down the margin slightly.

And we do, let's say, expect the margin decline to, let's say, slow down at least, if not reverse during the second half. So we do have lots of actions in place to support the margin, like we said at the beginning of the year, that is something we focus on. But we have also had to balance it on the footfall because that is also super important for any retailer to have enough footfall. So we will continue this storm and Halloween and similar campaigns in DollarStore as well. So it is -- like Sampo said, it's a balancing act to maintain the margins. And of course, we need to remember here is the absolute margin and that brings the profit and pays the bill. So relative margin is also important to follow, but the absolute margin is something that we try to optimize always.

We have 3 more persons asking for time for a question. So Maria, you will be next, please.

Yes. This is Maria Wikstrom from SEB. And nice to meet you, Sampo. Yes, I had 3 questions. I mean, first, I wanted to touch upon, I mean, your view on the Finnish consumer as I think earlier companies that have reported, I mean, namely Kesko and Verkokaupp, I think people have been talking about like an early signs of a stronger Finnish consumer. And if I read your report, I think you talked about the uncertainty. And I think, I mean, the like-for-like of I mean close to 0% for the Finnish market was a clear disappointment given very warm early summer weather. So can you a little bit describe your views on the Finnish consumer and why it was such a low like-for-like growth for the Finnish segment during the Q2?

Thanks, Maria. I think it's a necessity to say that Finnish customers have from one perspective, fast movers. And we also want to believe that the positive news, especially from the K Aupanlito Finnish Retail Association is such that we will be also moving into a retailer's advantage in general. And this might already take place for the Christmas trade this year. past years, people have a tendency to buy the Christmas gifts, no matter how much money you have in your wallet or if you do not have. And when we have these positive signs that concerns employments, investments, we also have a firm belief that customers will are a bit stronger in upcoming Christmas trade than in the past Christmas trades. And of course, Q4 from our side is by far the most important when it concerns turnover and EBIT, which is also one part of the guidance kept from our sake. So it's not only about Q1 and Q2, which have a minor role in the EBIT development, but Q3 and Q4 do really pay attention.

Is there something what you would like to say about the like-for-like development here in Finland, Tapio?

Yes, of course. I mean, it's not great. So of course, we will work hard on improving that. And as I said, I think we've said it several times that competition has been quite tough in Finland. We continue to see that. But like Sampo said, early positive signs in the consumers spending. I don't know if you want or wish or ability, I think there is more ability to spend now than there definitely was a year ago or 2 years ago, whether that spending actually materializes, that will be now very interesting to see because, again, the -- if you look at the bank account data, for example, I think we're at all-time high in Finland at the moment. Also quite a lot of money goes into investments. So hopefully, we will see in the second half more spending from the consumers also on consumables and also durable goods.

And of course, from a customer's sake, just briefly saying that there were uncertainties in customers' mind during the end of Q1, beginning of Q2, and that mainly applied to the uncertainties in Iran, uncertainties due to tariffs for U.S. And I do see and I do hope that these uncertainties will have no impact during the autumn time and will have no impact for the Christmas trade because, of course, we want Finnish customers to visit each and every of our 208 stores in Finland and also to have a confidence that they can treat their families and closest ones well.

Did you have Maria also a second question in your thought?

Yes, I actually had third question. So I go to my second question, which is, I mean, now I mean, when you have had a chance, I mean, to look through the Dollarstore operations, which have been the Achilles heel over the last, I mean, quite a few quarters now. I wanted to ask if you see a need for a store closures or relocation. So how different are the profit performance across the store network in Dollarstore?

Thanks for the question, Maria. I think it is about productivity and also profitability. and each and every store we need to follow. It is in our favor to have this wide network without any store closures. And we will definitely take each and every situation individually. At today's situation, we do not have any decisions for store closings. But yes, every store will be steered profitability and productivity steered as well.

And then my final question is, I mean, given that you've been now officially, I mean, 5 weeks into the job that what has surprised you either positively or negatively when you came like inside Tokmanni and not just, I mean, looking at it on a consumer perspective?

Perfect question. I was hoping somebody is raising that one. I have actually spent a lot of time now to meet our stores and meet our employees. And it has been such a positive welcoming discussions with our store clerks and salesperson in the stores. We have actually high self-esteem by every store. They want to meet the customer, and they are there for the customer. Then at the same time, when I look for the previous quarterly reports by Tapio and Mika, I also do see that there's room to improve when it concerns our offer and offer meaning wider assortment. And therefore, this approach, which has already started is essential. We are not taking it black and white, just introducing new SKUs.

We need to understand to whom we are making this widened offer. And this is part of autumn time work. And already now in July, we have had an external partner to make a customer survey on our behalf to really understand who is our core customer in Sweden, who is our core customer in Finland as well as in Denmark because commonalities are important. And then we need to understand market differences. And when we have the market differences, as an outcome, today, we have differentiated assortments in Finland. But in Sweden, there's more or less one assortment meeting each and every customer in all 142 stores. And that's something which is in our development topics already today, how to be strong in commonalities, how to vary when there's a need for that one.

And Maria, you had one more question.

No, I actually finished all my 3. Thank you so much.

Okay. Thank you. Then it's Miika. And last but not least, will be Svante. So Miika, your turn.

It's Miika from DNB Carnegie. I would like to ask, as you mentioned in the slides that Dollarstore like-for-like customer visits turned positive in June, whilst baskets grew by 4%. Were there any campaigns or something unusual that drove this performance? And could you please open up how July was for Dollarstore? Did this positive trend continue?

Thanks, Svante (sic) [ Mika ]. Yes, the question is such that we have now a common steering for campaigning, which also means that we had biweekly leaflets in Swedish markets, which gave us a stronger perception from the customer's perspective. But it's also like Tapio mentioned earlier, we had plenty of social media activities to reach the customers who were having a vacation and getting closer to our stores. I haven't heard though the Swedish radio commercial. But what I'm hearing from my friends, it has been enough annoying and making them to visit a store. So it's also in my pending list to follow the radio commercials from the past season, please.

Yes. Thank you, Sampo. Nice meeting you. Hope to meet you physically also soon. And thank you, Tapio, for the present. Actually, I just have one question left after the very long Q&A session. So actually, my question is regarding Dollarstore and the change of the concept with the like-for-like customer visits still being down, but not as much as in Q1. So have you seen any change in the mix of Dollarstore customers? I mean you obviously probably want to get a bit more customers in with a bit fatter wallet. So have you seen any change in the mix of Dollarstore customers?

Now I'm steering to Tapio because you know the history. I've been only visiting the stores in the past weeks. So what would be your point of view?

Yes. So the fact is that at the moment, we don't have a sort of loyalty program in Dollarstore neither in Sweden nor in Denmark. So we don't actually track the customers as individuals, unfortunately. So it's very difficult to say exactly. But as Sampo said, we're now conducting a customer survey and one of the main aims or goals of that is to really understand who are at the moment coming to our stores and what is the sort of customer profile and really build then the offering around so that we can serve our current customers the best we can, but also then as we develop our strategy, we need to, of course, then make decisions on who are going to be the future target customers.

Will we aim to enlarge the customer base because the -- in Finland, if you compare the Tokmanni customers, you could say that almost every Finn has visited Tokmanni during their lifetime, whereas in Sweden, when we bought Dollarstore, the situation was very different. So a large part of Swedes had never visited DollarStore. But however, the brand awareness of DollarStore is on a quite good level. We do know that. So I don't know if that -- I didn't exactly answer your question, but this is where we are today.

I think it's a good answer. And at the same time, early remarks, what I have seen, if I take a parking lot in Sweden, -- it might have Toyotas, it might have Volvo, but there are also boes. And that gives me also a clear sign that everyone who has visited a store has also come for the second time. When I've been visiting our stores during the summertime, and that's about the strong footfall, I have seen 2 cashiers open when a competitor only had 1, which is very positive from our sake. And we want to gain from this momentum.

And therefore, this common commercial steering and commercial campaigning is extremely important. And we really want to seduce the Swedish and Danish audience who are there to meet our stores. Stores are in great shape. There's no reason for them not to visit. I'd rather see them visiting us for the first time, second time and also become loyal friends of Dollar Store and Big Dollar.

It's 11:01, so I think it's from our sake, time to say thank you for your participation. It was also really nice to meet you via Teams. And also, I'm waiting for us to meet face-to-face in upcoming weeks and upcoming months. Now I would like to see you also visiting our stores and also give us a feedback. What did you find? What did you buy? And how was your customer perception and customer understanding because every customer point, every feedback is important for us when we development our operations here in Finland, but also in Sweden and Denmark further. So thank you for your time, and have a great Friday, end of the day and sunny weekend. according to weather forecast, it's time for barbecuing, which we have all the tools still available. So thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning and welcome to Tokmanni Group first quarter 2026 results presentation. My name is Mika Rautiainen, and today, together with me is -- presenting the key figures from the first quarter is Tokmanni Group CFO, Mr. Tapio Arimo.

I will first go through the key topics for the first quarter for Tokmanni Group and then Tapio will come and open up the key figures a little bit more detailed. Afterwards, it's time for questions. So let's get started.

The first quarter for Tokmanni Group revenue growth continued. Of course, the concentration is a lot on Dollarstore in Sweden and in Denmark. The turnaround is in progress. Let's take a little bit closer look at that.

This slide, we've been using already now for some time. As you can see, the revenue growth for both segments were basically on the same level. That's why there are no changes with the share of the revenues between -- with the 2 segments.

However, I'd like to point out on the right-hand side, the sales share of private labels, which is already 26.9% compared with previous year's 23.5%. So remarkable growth with the private label sales. And of course, if you compare the amount of the shared products at the moment, it's 5,700 when last year at this time, it was 2,000.

And about the store network, there was basically 1 opening during the first quarter. That was a Dollarstore opening in Sweden. In 1 year time, there is the net increase with the store network was 11 stores altogether.

Tokmanni Group first quarter. The revenue increased by 6.4%. Increased customer visits drove especially Tokmanni segment revenue to the growth of 6.5%. Dollarstore segment revenue increased by 7.3% and the like-for-like basket size increased. However, the customer visits declined. I will come back to this a little bit later.

Operating expenses increased, especially in Dollarstore due to new store openings and development actions. The group EBIT decreased especially due to increased operating expenses, which I will also touch a little bit later with Dollarstore segment.

Cash flow for the quarter was almost in the all-time best level. It was minus -- however, minus during the first quarter, minus EUR 13.7 million compared to previous year's minus EUR 75.2 million.

Now the Middle East conflict is -- well, first of all, it didn't have any impact during the first quarter. However, starting actually already in March, but basically already in April, there are some increasing costs. And this is especially for the fuel surcharges, meaning that the outbound freight services are already on a higher level for the whole group.

Later on, there will be also like purchase price increases, especially in those products which are related to oil prices, basically plastic, polyester and so on. These price -- purchase price increases we will be facing mainly during the second half of this year. But basically, the fluctuation of the oil prices will, of course, affect on the outbound freight services.

Obviously, at the moment, it looks as the fuel prices are a little bit coming down. But obviously, it's varying basically daily as we all know. So this is the situation or these are the effects for Tokmanni Group when it comes to the Middle East conflict.

And then about the Tokmanni segment for the first quarter. Revenue increased by 6.5% due to increased customer visits. The like-for-like customer visits was 5.2%. So we were actually very happy regarding the Tokmanni segment performance during the first quarter.

Sales of apparel due to, well, traditional good winter and outdoor products, these were very good. Of course, the timing of Easter was supporting also Tokmanni segment sales.

However, in March, the garden season is still on a very low level. So the effect wasn't that strong. But anyway, of course, Easter chocolates and so on, they were selling, of course, a lot more during the first quarter compared this year with the second quarter. And of course, Easter decorations. These were the product groups which grew most.

The low-price program, actually, you can see the picture, the Suomen Halvin, the lowest price in Finland, we started this at the beginning of the year, actually in February. It was very, very successful.

But of course, it had a slightly negative impact on gross margin. But this is something that a discounter has to, every now and then, keep reminding the customers about the discounted price level. This was very successful with Tokmanni during the first quarter. And of course, it has -- we've continued with this during the second quarter as well.

Comparable gross profit improved by EUR 2.1 million. Operating expenses were well in control. Comparable EBIT improved for the third consecutive quarter for Tokmanni segment. And this is, of course, something we're very happy about, even though it was a small improvement and still the EBIT for the first quarter is traditionally on minus, but we're able to improve the performance of Tokmanni segment.

And then, of course, an important thing also for Tokmanni segment is the SPAR operations. Tokmanni EUROSPAR stores are performing very well. Sales growth has been double digit during the first quarter 2026.

And if we take a look -- a little bit closer look on the EUROSPAR supermarkets together with Tokmanni, we had a first opening last year June, then in October and in November.

So obviously, right after the starting -- right after the openings, we -- of course, we faced very good sales increase. But obviously, it's more important how the sales look at the moment. And as I said, this year, during the first quarter, the first 3 stores, which were basically the pilot stores for Tokmanni SPAR operations, the sales increase has been double digit. That's something we're extremely happy.

We opened the fourth store in Jarvenpaa in March. And actually yesterday in Joensuu, we opened the fifth store. And in Iisalmi, we will open the sixth Tokmanni EUROSPAR in June next month.

So basically, the SPAR operations are proceeding. And as we call it ourselves, the first 3 were basically testing, learning, of course, the fourth as well. But at the moment, it looks very promising and that's why we will be proceeding even faster now after -- especially -- well, after the Iisalmi in June and then after the summer holidays.

And then let's step to Dollarstore segment. Revenue grew by 7.3% and reached EUR 106.4 million, supported by the new store openings. In local currencies, revenue increased by 3.1%. With Dollarstore, the sales of leisure, home electronics and obviously, the same story with Easter timing, the Easter chocolate and decoration grew most during the first quarter.

The issue actually for Dollarstore during the first quarter was the like-for-like customer visits, which decreased by 7.4%. And this was basically mainly coming from January and February, where basically last year, we were having very, very strong sales operations and we were not able to reach the same customer levels as previous year.

Then, of course, in March already, while the launch of the Billigast campaign started, then we were able to perform much better.

Comparable gross profit improved to EUR 36.5 million from EUR 33.4 million, but the operating expenses increased mainly due to these store openings and the development actions. So the comparable EBIT was negative EUR 10.5 million compared with previous year's negative EUR 7.8 million.

Basically, the development actions, they have been causing especially during -- well, during the last 6 months, quite a lot of additional costs. The development actions are basically concerning the commercial process, the supply chain process, the store operations and of course, IT development as well.

So there has been quite a lot of additional costs, especially while putting the same process in place in Dollarstore that we have in Tokmanni at the moment.

Let's take a little bit closer look at this Dollarstore turnaround. So we started the Billigast campaign in March and obviously, the results from March were already very, very promising. And the results also from March were already better compared with previous year.

The broader assortment as well as the new elements of the concept, we've been working on this for -- now for a bit over -- well, obviously, we've been working for 1.5 years, but -- especially with the new concepts, but we opened the first concept in Erikslund last September. And the second pilot store was opened in March in Kallered, close to Gothenburg.

Now we had very good start with Erikslund store, but the Erikslund store is actually -- it's -- compared the average size for Dollarstore, it was quite big, 4,000 square meters. With Kallered, we obviously made some amendments because that's clearly smaller, 2,600 square meters, which is the average size for Dollarstore.

And I have to say that the results from these 2 pilot stores are very promising, both in sales and in margin, especially this Kallered is quite important for us because it represents basically an average Dollarstore. And Kallered at the moment is on the top sellers of Dollarstore and the profitability level is on the very top.

So we're very satisfied with, let's say, the concept development in Dollarstore and we will start rolling out the new assortment and the new elements in the concept in phases, in different phases during '26, '27.

Actually, the first phase will start next week. And then the second phase will be done after -- right after the summer holidays. And then the first -- the third phase will take place in the beginning of next year when especially products coming from Far East, apparel, DIY, home electronics, we are able to launch them in this new concept.

Something else regarding the development of Dollarstore, the commercial planning process is ongoing. And nowadays, we're doing this together, Tokmanni and Dollarstore segment. And the first joint commercial plan will be launched actually next week together with the launch of the first phase of this rollout of the new concept.

The group supply chain management is proceeding also very well. First steps of harmonizing data systems and processes are already in place. Obviously, we still have a lot to do, but we are very confident regarding the fact that we're able to do this harmonization during this year. Obviously, part of this will be done during the second half, but during the first half, we are able to proceed already very well.

And of course, last but definitely not least, the group IT is rolling out, for example, the common store IT infrastructure and harmonizing applications, which is obviously a big job. So the turnaround process is definitely speeding up and we will be very happy with the new launch -- the phases of the new launch of the new concept with the broader assortment with these Dollarstores and of course, Big Dollar in Denmark.

That's about the Dollarstore. And Tapio, please, could you please join me and share some light with the key figures?

All right. Thank you, Mika and good morning, everyone, on my behalf as well. So looking at our key figures, like Mika mentioned, we had a pretty good quarter in terms of revenue growth. So total growth, 6.4% compared to last year's 0.8% growth.

And our total sales reached EUR 363.6 million. Also, our like-for-like revenue on a group level increased by 2.5% as compared to the slight decline of 1.9% last year. And this like-for-like revenue growth was driven by Tokmanni segment.

Also, our comparable gross margin or gross profit increased by EUR 4.8 million from a year ago and was EUR 120.2 million. And the gross margin declined slightly to 33.1 percentage points.

Our comparable EBIT, which is normal to be negative on the first quarter was negative EUR 13.7 million this year compared to EUR 11.2 million last year and the margin was negative 3.8% of revenue.

One of the most positive things about this quarter, obviously, was our cash flow, which continued to be extremely strong and amounted to minus EUR 13.7 million as opposed to minus EUR 75 million a year ago. And our earnings per share diluted was on last year's level, at EUR 0.32 negative.

So moving on to the revenue components. So as said, the majority of the growth came from Tokmanni segment and the percentage growth in Tokmanni segment was 6.5 percentage points. And in the Dollarstore, in local currencies, the revenue grew by 3.1%. And like said, on a like-for-like basis, on the Dollarstore, the revenue growth was clearly negative for last quarter.

Then when we look at our sales mix, so both Tokmanni and Dollarstore visible here and really positive development in Tokmanni segment that the share of the non-grocery sales actually increased slightly in quarter 1 and this was driven by the, I would say, more normal or even good winter season in Finland and which increased obviously the sale of winter-related products.

For example, clothing and gear related to shoveling snow and so on. And that drove up the percentage slightly.

Dollarstore, also the share of non-grocery increased slightly and similar reasons there as well compared to last year. And obviously, we also had more of the Tokmanni private label assortment on sale at Dollarstore, which is mostly non-grocery.

Looking at our private label sales. So there, we had a very good quarter. Again, the share of private labels increased by more than 3 percentage points to 26.9%. And again, driven by the strong performance of winter-related products, for example, clothing, which is -- a majority is private label sales.

Then when you look at our gross profit, as said, the absolute gross profit increased by EUR 4.8 million and the relative gross margin declined slightly. At Tokmanni, the decline was more marked, but the absolute comparable gross profit, of course, grew and the very successful campaigning that we did during the quarter, especially since we launched the Suomen Halvin, that had a slightly negative impact on the comparable gross margin.

And also our customers continue to be very cautious with the purchasing and the proportion of purchases of discount products was on a quite high level in Q1 and that just sort of highlights the tough economic situation in Finland.

In Dollarstore, the gross margin also increased clearly, EUR 3.1 million and also the gross margin increased by 0.6 percentage points. And that, of course, is good development. And hopefully, we see that trend continuing also going forward. And that change obviously driven in large part by the share of increase in the private label sales at Dollarstore.

Then our operating expenses. So there, the development on a group level is slightly positive as relating to net sales. And that again has been driven by Tokmanni segment, where the percentage of expenses to revenue declined to 26 percentage points from 26.8% a year ago.

Whereas in Dollarstore, the expenses continue to grow faster than sales. As Mika explained, we have had obviously a lot of cost in all the development activities we are doing there. And of course, we have many new stores from a year ago. So that obviously drives up expenses as well.

Then when you look at our comparable EBIT, so for Tokmanni segment, EBIT was negative minus or negative EUR 2.2 million, which is a slight improvement from a year ago. Obviously, we're very happy with the direction of the improvement and this is now the third quarter in a row that we've been able to improve the comparable EBIT in the Tokmanni segment.

Then the development was different at Dollarstore where the losses grew to EUR 10.5 million. And obviously, we're not happy with that kind of development. So we are doing a lot of activities to turn around Dollarstore, as Mika was highlighting earlier.

Then on inventory management. So that continued to be on a very good level. So the inventories are still clearly lower than a year ago, even though we have 11 more stores today than we had a year ago.

And we've been able to improve the inventory management with work and with improvement in our systems and fine-tuning the parameters in the system, so to speak, so that we actually have more inventory in the stores relative to the central warehouses because, obviously, the stores need to be full and enticing to consumers.

So we want to have the stores as much inventory as possible. And of course, in the warehouse is where the good sign available for sale, we want to minimize the inventories in the warehouses.

And the total inventory was EUR 456.5 million compared to EUR 481.2 million a year ago. And actually, both segments managed to decrease their inventories, which is obviously good news.

Then when we look at our financing, also here, I would say we're making steady progress, especially with the interest-bearing debt. You can see the last 5 quarters, there is a fairly steady decline in the amount of debt from banks and financial institutions. And as we've said, we are working to bring that down over time.

And then the, let's say, the IFR lease debt, that has a little bit of a life of its own depending on new leases and renewals of leases and so on. But this quarter, it came down slightly.

Of course, the way it's structured, we are paying down interest-bearing lease liability around EUR 10 million every month and then new leases and renewals of leases, of course, then increase that figure as they happen. So we are doing some operational activities to ensure that also that number stays in control.

So it will fluctuate somewhat and it may go up or down a little bit, but we are trying to, let's say, contain that number also. And also, of course, continuing to work on the bank debt slowly coming down over the coming quarters.

Our net debt to comparable EBITDA, which is the only covenant on our net debt. Again, that increased slightly from Q4. So it's now at 4.17, but I would say, a very modest increase.

So we are on -- let's say, financial position for us is good and we have flexibility if need be to increase that number also. But obviously, that's not what we are aiming to do.

And our net debt, including IFRS liabilities, was EUR 279 million at the end of Q1, which is down significantly from a year ago of EUR 355.5 million. And also worth to note here, we made a slight adjustment in the definition of cash.

So previously, we had credit card receivables that have a duration of typically 1 business day. We had classified those in other receivables. And now we have made a change to classify them as cash. So there's a slight change in the historic figures starting from Q4 2024, but it's a very minor impact.

Then looking at our cash flow. Again, I'm very happy with the cash flow. So negative $13.7 million compared to last year of negative EUR 75.2 million and the year before that of negative $40 million. So that is a reflection of the hard work that we are doing in managing our working capital.

Then looking at our capital expenditure, that is on a, I would say, normal level. So total was $5.3 million in the first quarter, divided to Dollarstore $1.4 million and Tokmanni $3.9 million. And again, this fluctuates a little bit quarter-over-quarter, but that's sort of annualized total level expect to be somewhere around EUR 30 million plus/minus some million. So nothing out of the ordinary here.

Then I'll invite Mika back to talk a little bit about our guidance and actions.

Sure. Thanks, Tapio, for opening up the figures. Please don't go any place because, like, I think that we're ending up soon with the questions.

Yes, regarding the Tokmanni Group's guidance for 2026. Based on the progress for 2026, the beginning of 2026, we keep the guidance unchanged, meaning that we expect the revenue to be in the range of EUR 1.78 billion to EUR 1.86 billion. And EBIT, we expect to be in the range of EUR 85 million to EUR 105 million.

And this is basically the actions we're concentrating during 2026. The actions are to -- basically to improve Tokmanni Group profitability. There are the action points regarding -- related to sources of growth, which are low price program. We already -- both -- we spoke about it, about Dollarstore, which we also told during this presentation and SPAR.

Obviously, the profitability will be improved while putting the -- combining the volumes and doing the joint buying together. Obviously, cost control is in the DNA for discounters and inventory management. As Tapio was explaining, it's very well in control at the moment. So these are exactly the actions that we are concentrating.

Obviously, there are also sources of success, which is like one company, which is especially important for Tokmanni Group. The work transformation and productivity, obviously, with several different ways is affecting also Tokmanni Group and we're taking here quite a lot of actions at the moment. And one of our basically most important values, better together, of course, is guiding all the work that we're doing.

So this is basically the first quarter 2026 result presentation. And now it's time for questions.

Please let's get started. And the first one to have questions, it's Maria Wikstrom.

Yes. Perfect. I have 3 questions. I'd like to start with the Dollarstore. And of course, I mean, the traffic figure was disappointing. And wanting to see if you have made a better analysis, I mean, from the credit card data that if you actually have lost these clients? Or is it more that the clients don't come into your store as often as they did in the past?

Well, in Dollarstore, we -- the biggest loss of customers took place in January, February. Last year, we were selling out basically a lot of Christmas winter products during January, February with minus 70% discount.

We had a lot of customers coming in. And this year, we didn't have this strong sales. So obviously, that had the biggest effect on the customer visits. Again, in March already where we were a little bit like referring already closer to the -- to previous year's numbers, we were able to have a lot better month. So that's basically the background situation.

Now with Dollarstore, as I was explaining, we've had this pilot store and we are now rolling out towards this kind of store concept with broader assortment and so on. Obviously, we need to do quite a lot of work to get, of course, all the old customers back to visit Dollarstore.

Already in Kallered, we -- even though it's a new store, we were -- we are very happy. And based on the customers' reactions also to the store, we are very happy regarding that. But we -- obviously, we need to do quite a lot of work with marketing and that's also part of the plan starting from next week. It was a pretty wide answer to your first question. I hope that was okay.

Yes. And I actually wanted to continue from there. I'm curious about your initial experiences, I mean, from 2 pilot stores. What are currently the products from Tokmanni assortment that are also selling well in Sweden?

Yes. Well, first of all, if I go a little bit back with the pilot stores. In Erikslund, we had -- well, there, we got some reactions from customers or yes, also feedback, which product groups were not working that well and that we changed to Kallered.

And now we're very happy with the Kallered operations. It's -- we've added almost 50% with the SKU level compared with Dollarstore -- with a typical Dollarstore, meaning that the SKU level is closer to 18,000.

And well, it's -- obviously, Dollarstore has very, very -- traditionally very strong product groups like washing papers and cleaning, this kind of -- and party, this kind of product groups, but the strong product groups from Tokmanni are also now doing pretty well in Kallered.

And that is apparel, which is basically everyday clothing, DIY, storage, outdoor leisure, car accessories. It's basically in several categories where we are having a very, very good sales growth compared with, let's say, a typical Dollarstore.

And then my final question is your inventory levels are now down year-over-year, I mean, just ahead of the kind of high season for your sales. So is the balance sheet driving your business decisions, I mean, having lower inventories? Or is it -- I mean, deliberately, you just wanted to bring down the inventory levels?

The balance sheet is not driving the business. So it's the business that's driving the business. So -- but of course, the fact that, for example, we have implemented RELEX a year ago now at Tokmanni and -- or over a year ago, it started and we're continuing to fine-tune it and improve the, let's say, forecasting capabilities.

So obviously, the better we are able to forecast, the better -- the less inventory we need of specific products because we can be more sure that we have the right amount in a way.

And it's also, like I was discussing the balance between -- because you always want to have the stores full of products. If you can do that with less central warehouse inventory, that obviously helps in managing the total inventory. So roughly 2/3 of the inventory is in stores and then 1/3 is in the warehouse or on the way. So that's roughly the split.

Yes. If I may add to that, that's -- the launch of RELEX a year ago has been improving Tokmanni segment inventory management a lot. And especially with Dollarstore, we've changed the business model where basically we're not using the local traders that much, the local wholesalers that much, but we're importing directly to our Orebro warehouse.

I think this inventory management, especially with -- starting from the Orebro warehouse has been on an extremely good level this year. So I think that the -- as Tapio mentioned, the balance sheet is not driving the business, but very happy about the inventory management that Tokmanni Group is now doing in -- both in Finland and in Sweden.

I think that both -- the stores in all countries, whether it's in Denmark, Sweden or in Finland, I think that they have more products at the moment, or the inventory values are on a higher level compared with previous year. But the warehouses are on a lower level. That's, of course, a good sign.

And the next one is Arttu Heikura.

It's Arttu at Inderes. A couple of questions. Could you elaborate on the Dollarstore concept renewal phases? And how many stores are renewed during this year?

Well, we're actually doing that -- it's not like store by store. It's product group by product group. So the first phase, we're able to do -- now starting from next week or actually, we've been preparing that for quite some time now.

Unfortunately, a big part of that has been done manually because we don't have the systems in place yet. But anyway, we're able to do the first phase to all stores now during the first half. And that, of course, has -- that includes new product groups for Dollarstore and also products from Tokmanni.

And then the second phase will take place and that's also like product groups, that will take place after summer and then we'll already have the systems in place. So the whole process will be automated.

And then the third phase, in the beginning of next year when we'll have the products coming from Far East, as I mentioned, apparel, home electronics, DIY, that's the third phase and that they will always come to all stores. So we will basically be increasing the assortment of all Dollarstores in 3 phases.

Okay. That's clear. And then do you expect fixed costs to further increase due to this renewal process?

There's always some slight extra cost, of course, when you do these things.

Especially in IC, yes, there is.

Yes. Yes. But I don't expect significant increase, let's put it that way.

Okay. And then about Tokmanni segment, it seems that the price program has been harming the segment's gross margin during the Q1. So do you think that the same pattern will continue also in Q2 and going forward?

Well, as you noticed that -- yes, well, it has been working -- from our perspective, it has been working very well. The competition, of course, in Finland is very, very hard and the situation, let's say, the economic situation in Finland hasn't been that good.

So from a discounter point, the Suomen Halvin has been -- we consider it a success because more than 5% like-for-like customer growth, very good sales increase in the Finnish environment.

And yes -- but yes, there has been -- the gross margin has been lower. Of course, we're able to -- the more we learn about it, the more we are able to manage it as well because let's put it this way, the Suomen Halvin and all the products that we've been labeling with Suomen Halvin, they've been extremely popular among our customers.

So now we know a lot more about it. But yes, maybe it shows also a little bit the situation in Finland that, let's say, the customers' concentration is very much on price at the moment.

All right. Then about the increased purchase prices, which are kind of going to affect you in H2. So what is your appetite to increase customer prices due to that?

Well, it's -- especially when it's like products which are related to the oil price like plastic, for example and things like this, I believe that the same goes with all retailers in this area.

So we'll be following quite closely what's happening in the market. And yes, we -- at the moment, we're all the time having basically the price negotiations and there are a lot of issues regarding this, but it's not that simple and not that clear.

We're talking about, let's say, with -- at the moment, my estimation, that's my personal estimation, but just yesterday when I was having the discussion with our Far East personnel, we were talking about like with, let's say, plastic-related products, 2% to 3%, maybe 4% increase with price.

So it's not that significant price increase. I'd say that the bigger impact at the moment comes via the outbound freight services, because that's happening right at the moment.

Okay. Okay. That's clear. Well, then about the assumptions behind the guidance. So Q1 was -- I mean, your profit decreased, so -- and you are kind of expecting your profit to improve. So has there been any changes behind the assumptions on the guidance? And if you could elaborate more about how do you think that your profit will improve going forward?

Well, basically, as already mentioned with the guidance part, based on the progress of -- in the beginning of 2026, we keep the guidance unchanged. Obviously, that basically includes the turnaround happened also in Dollarstore and we're confident that that's what's happening at the moment.

And the next one is Miika Ihamaki.

It's Miika from DNB Carnegie. Just on the confidence on the turnaround at Dollarstores. So I understand that you've been now testing those broader assortments in -- at 2 pilot stores, mentioned early results look promising in both sales and margin.

That said, we're talking about around 150 stores. So it will likely take time before these improvements show up meaningfully in your overall numbers, as you discussed as well, separated into those bases. And then presumably, there can be also some extra costs.

And after the deeper losses this quarter and with around 10 new Dollarstore openings this year, adding to that underlying cost base. So my key question here is that, what gives you confidence that Dollarstore profitability will improve this year?

Yes. Well, first of all, as I mentioned, this Kallered opening, we've been very satisfied with that. We had to change the assortment from the Erikslund, which is also like one of the biggest stores in sales for Dollarstore.

However, it's also like -- the size of the store is one of the biggest in Dollarstore. But anyway, with Kallered, we're happy with the progress. It might be a little bit too early to say, but it's the most profitable store in Dollarstore. So that's, of course, giving us quite a lot of confidence.

And yes, of course, it would be nice to be able to roll out everything, all stores to this, let's say, to this Kallered type of a store as soon as possible, but we have to take it in phases.

And we do believe that when we are doing that in phases, the stores are able to deliver and execute changes. And obviously, we will be inviting quite a lot of new customers with the new assortment. Based on all these things, that's what's making us pretty confident with the situation.

Then my second question is on timing of Easter, which likely benefited your Q1 sales. So do you have any estimate, or can you quantify how much was the contribution to Q1 revenue and gross profit? And how should we think about the magnitude of reversal heading into Q2 2026, especially on Tokmanni Finland?

Yes. Well, first of all, obviously, the Easter, let's say, Easter chocolates and decorations, that was definitely giving positive impact on the first quarter. But I have to say that during this, let's say, spring time -- for retailers like Tokmanni Group, let's say, the spring seasonal effects, in this case, meaning weather, has quite a lot to do with the total picture.

For example, previous year, we didn't have a springtime at all. Actually, in the beginning of April, last year was pretty good. And then May, June in the whole of Nordics were pretty lousy weather-wise. And since we are very strong with garden, the garden has an effect. And especially if Easter is -- the timing is in April and the weather is good, it has a very, very strong effect on business.

In this case, when it's actually affecting on more towards March, then the garden effect is not that strong. But definitely, Easter chocolates, decoration, things like this were positive on the first quarter side.

Then at the moment, the second quarter and let's say, the spring season, luckily enough, it looks pretty promising at the moment. So it's very difficult to start quantifying it in any ways. But yes, let's put it this way. Of course, development for the spring season in all Nordic countries is very good at the moment.

Okay. My final question is that if you can remind of your covenants tied to your net debt-to-EBITDA ratio?

Yes. We haven't disclosed that number, but let's say there is still some headroom in the figures. So...

And the next one is Svante Krokfors.

A couple of questions left from my side. First one is, you mentioned about the negative development in like-for-like customer visits for Dollarstore has some effects from that -- or very strong comps.

But have you made some investigations or surveys into why customers should come to your store in the same manner as in previous years, apart from what you can read from your credit card data?

Well, yes, as already mentioned, we didn't have the sales -- we didn't have as strong sales as we had actually previous year. That had a lot to do with the fact. And obviously, based on what the customers, especially in Sweden, are telling us, it's -- they are missing some of the entry-level products, which unfortunately, we're not able to continue selling due to the fact that these are -- the quality level is quite, let's put it this way, questionable.

So in a way, we've increased the quality level and at the same time, the price level has been slightly higher. At the same time, the customers coming to our stores are basically very happy regarding the new assortment.

And that's why, for example, the basket size is increasing very well in Dollarstore. But basically, it is a little bit of a change from an entry-level operator to more quality operator. And this, of course, will take some time. But at the moment, the first results and especially I'm referring again to the pilot stores, these are so good that like we are confident with the future.

And apart from changing to a bit higher quality, is there some other measures that you have to increase the customer traffic from perhaps consumers with slightly more purchasing power than Dollarstore customers have had?

Well, obviously, we are in a very interesting position with Dollarstore because we are now launching new products for all Swedish and Danish customers and we will be telling about that very strongly to all customers in Sweden and in Denmark. So we will expect to have quite a positive impact with the strong marketing plans that we're having.

And then about the rollout of new products phase by phase into Dollarstore network. Have you made some analysis on how -- I mean, I think you said that you do it on product group level. So do you have an estimation of how much the kind of average price will go up in the different categories after this has been done?

It's like new products. It's not necessarily higher-priced products. It's almost like 50% more SKUs when we're talking about after 3 phases.

So I'm not sure. For example, there will be some coming from some dry food products, which actually Tokmanni is also having in Finland. So these are one of -- these are very, let's say, low-priced or let's say, the price point is very low for these products.

So we are having -- so I don't consider the price point to go higher. Assortment will be broader and more interesting.

And are there any more questions?

I guess not. So thank you very much. This actually happens to be my last result presentation. So thank you very much. And the next one in August will be led by the new Tokmanni Group CEO, Mr. Sampo Paallysaho. Thank you very much.

Good morning, and a warm welcome to Tokmanni Group's Fourth Quarter 2025 Results Presentation. My name is Mika Rautiainen. And today, together with me is Tokmanni Group's CFO, Mr. Tapio Arimo. I will first go through the main points of the fourth quarter. Tapio will come and explain a little bit more specifically the financial figures.

I will come back with the 2026 guidance and proposal for dividend. After that, it's time for questions. So let's get started. Yes. First of all, Tokmanni segment was performing well regarding the profit.

And on the other hand, Dollarstore segment has a lot of room for improvement, but the actions are ongoing. Let's take a look a little bit closer on this. Familiar picture, I would like to point out a couple of things from here. First of all, the revenue of Dollarstore segment is growing in the group, and it was -- during the last quarter, it was already 28% compared with previous year's 26%. The sale of groceries for the whole group was 53.5%, and it was growing actually, and it's something to do with the economic situation in both countries, but especially in Finland.

The sale of private labels was 27.5%. It's a very nice increase over there, mainly coming from Sweden and Denmark. Previous year, the figure for private labels was 26.8%.

At the moment, we're having in the whole group, 5,900 shared products. During the Christmas season, it was already more than 6,000 due to the Christmas seasonal products. But at the moment, it's more than 5,900 shared products. And this is, of course, something we're very happy with. And then about the store network, yes, we're developing the store network, all the time, mainly in Sweden and Denmark.

So 12 new stores compared with previous year. These Dollarstore segment new stores, especially in the end of the year, they include new pilot stores for the joint assortment together with Tokmanni. But I will be coming back to that part a little bit later.

And then about the fourth quarter figures regarding the group. First of all, Tokmanni Group's revenue increased by 2.8%. Tokmanni segment's revenue declined due to lower basket size, which is basically the end result from the very weak consumer trust basically on the economic situation.

Dollarstore segment revenue grew and the average basket size increased, but the comparable customer visits declined. The gross margin percent improvement was driven by Tokmanni segment during the fourth quarter and also the cost management was very successful in Finland, but expenses at Dollarstore segment increased due to the new store openings and development actions.

These 2 new store openings, as I mentioned, they included the new pilot stores where we're basically testing the joint larger assortment in Sweden actually. And obviously, this was -- since we don't have the same database yet. So mainly all of the work was done manually.

And of course, it caused us quite a lot of additional expenses. However, we're extremely satisfied with the new store openings. The new pilot stores are almost double with the sales regarding the average Dollarstore stores. And well, the other development actions we're working on the IT and the supply chain very hard at the moment.

For example, the master data operations is very crucial for our future success and efficiencies as well as the warehouse management, which we basically renewed almost like totally during 2025. Anyway, the group's EBIT improved, especially due to the good cost control in Finland.

The group EBIT actually was the all-time high for the fourth quarter for Tokmanni Group when you look at the absolute euros. Then a couple of words about Tokmanni segment. The revenue declined, as already mentioned, due to the customers' lower basket size. We could clearly see that there were like very careful customers during the fourth quarter for the Christmas season.

Unfortunately, the economic situation in Finland was on a very, let's say, low level and also the belief in the personal economy was on a very low level, very high unemployment rate and things like this, they affect customers' behavior quite a lot. The comparable gross profit improved by EUR 1.5 million, compared with the previous year.

The operating expenses decreased due to very successful cost control. We were very satisfied with cost control in Finland in general. So the EBIT -- comparable EBIT improved by EUR 3.9 million to EUR 40.9 million during the fourth quarter. The first -- in Finland, the first 3 Tokmanni Eurospar stores are performing very well. These were the first one was opened last June.

And then in October and November, the openings, obviously, they were very successful and double-digit sales increase in all the 3 stores. I'm especially very happy about the fact that, for example, during this year, the double-digit development for both food and the whole stores, it's continued.

So this is obviously a way for growth also for Tokmanni segment. And actually, the next Eurospar opening will be happening in Järvenpää in the southern part of Finland in March, so in a couple of weeks' time.

And then, of course, we will move on with other food stores in Tokmanni chain, and we will convert basically all of the food selling stores to SPAR stores. But we'll come back to that then later on. But I have to say that -- we -- basically, we've been learning and studying the SPAR way of doing the food business with these first 3 stores. We're very happy of the learnings and now we're basically ready to move on faster.

And then Dollarstore segment. Revenue grew by 12.2% in euros. It reached EUR 148.5 million, supported by the new store openings and the stronger Swedish krona against euro. In local currencies, the revenue increased by 6.8%. And as you can see, the difference with foreign exchange is quite dramatic. So the Swedish krona is definitely stronger.

Tapio might touch this slightly when it comes to the financial figures later on. The total number of customers increased by 2.2%, but the comparable customers visit decreased. Basket size grew by 3.4%. Grocery sales increased by 7.8%. So also like in Dollarstore, the development in groceries were higher compared with previous year.

And the comparable gross profit improved by EUR 5.4 million, but the operating expenses coming from the store openings and the development project, whether it was like the pilot stores, the master data or the warehouse management, they caused additional expenses, and that's why the comparable EBIT was clearly lower compared with previous year, EUR 8.3 million.

A couple of words about Dollarstore. First of all, we consider this as a turnaround company. At the time of the acquisition, summer 2023, Dollarstore had the lowest price level in Sweden and was absolutely the place to buy entry-level products. And the aim of the company was to offer the cheapest alternatives in all products.

This, of course, is for a discounter, it's a fantastic strategy. But if you don't have the highest volumes, it's -- you end up in a situation where there needs to be some compromises with the product quality. For Tokmanni Group, these kind of issues are basically a no-go situation.

So we needed to start to change to more sustainable products because for the whole group, we basically couldn't continue with very poor quality, not sustainable products. Of course, it shows with -- for our customers like the change is actually quite dramatic in some areas.

But today, Dollarstore is offering still the best-in-class in terms of price. So we're very compatible -- competitive with the prices as the local newspaper, Aftonbladet also approved in January with the price comparison. But now we can rely and especially the customers can rely on the quality of the products. At the moment, as already mentioned, Dollarstore is offering more than 5,900 common SKUs with Tokmanni. This is basically definitely the direction we're going.

We're already seeing with the pilot stores that similar type of assortment works actually very well. However, we definitely do need to take into consideration the Swedish consumption habits. So there will be like the local assortment in Sweden and the local assortment in Denmark as well.

And as we know, there is a local assortment in Finland. In this case, for example, SPAR products. By the way, there are at the moment in Finland in all Tokmanni stores, there are almost like 200 SPAR SKUs for sale at the moment.

So yes, there will be like a joint assortment with the local assortments. Now what I'm very happy is the next bullet point. During the last weeks, we've been working for the first time with the joint commercial planning and implementation for both Tokmanni and Dollarstore.

And obviously, this is basically the first time we're really able to basically use the strength from the volumes that we have altogether. And in Dollarstore, we'll also concentrate on improving the Dollarstore's operational efficiency with joint IT systems and streamlined supply chain operations.

We have started already last year. It will take time, but we're already seeing like very good development in these areas. But these are some fundamental base building for the future success for Dollarstore and the whole group.

The next one, a couple of comments regarding the strategy period, which ended by the end of 2025. So when we look at the strategic targets for the strategy period '21, '25 and how we succeeded with that. As you can see, the revenue, which was actually lifted during the acquisition of Dollarstore, we're quite close with the revenue target. Obviously, the next one, the comparable EBIT is something where we're extremely disappointed.

It's only on the level of a little bit less than EUR 85 million, where the target was EUR 150 million. Now in when we were basically building this or setting the strategic targets for the strategy period, it was end 2020, beginning of 2021. Obviously, the world was very different at that time. We were in the middle of pandemic. Obviously, when the pandemic time was actually very, very good for the retailers.

After that, a huge inflation increase. the war in Ukraine, a lot of things have happened. But still, it's -- we should have performed much better with the EBIT level. And now, of course, all the actions are for this year. And I could imagine that also for the next category -- for the next strategy period, it will be on profitability.

With the store network, the target was 360 stores in Nordics. Now we're in 356. So actually, that's quite okay. With the net debt divided by comparable EBITDA, the target was less than 2.25. So we're slightly over that with 2.71.

Dividend, the target was about 70% of net result for the financial year. For '21, '22, '23, I think we were doing very well with this. But for '24, '25, it's clearly less than the 70% due to the target of strengthening the group's balance sheet. So this is basically the setup with the strategic period.

Obviously, one of the key issues regarding this strategic period that we just ended was that we will also enter the Nordic countries, and that, of course, has happened.

Now our job is to focus on the profitability on the whole group level and to move on from here. So that's about the strategy period, which ended. And the next one is the financial figures. Tapio, please, could you come and explain them a little bit more specifically? Thank you.

Thank you, Mika. So good morning, everybody, on my behalf as well. So let's jump a little bit deeper into the figures. First, just the headline numbers for the fourth quarter.

So our total group revenue grew by 2.8%, reaching EUR 510 million. And as Mika mentioned, that is our all-time high naturally. Our like-for-like revenue decreased slightly, about 1.7% for the fourth quarter, and our comparable gross margin increased to EUR 183.8 million and also the comparable gross margin percent increased slightly to 36.0% for the fourth quarter.

And our comparable EBIT totaled EUR 48.2 million. And that again is an all-time high for the group for any quarter in the history of the company, so not a bad result as such.

And the EBIT margin was 9.4%, a slight decline from last year. Also, our cash flow during the fourth quarter was very strong. Operating cash flow totaled EUR 108.6 million, an increase of over EUR 30 million from a year ago.

And our earnings per share for the fourth quarter was EUR 0.52 per share. Then going a bit deeper into the revenues, both for the quarter and for the year. So as I said, for the quarter, we had EUR 510.8 million, a growth of about 2.8% and the growth really coming from Dollarstore segment, and that growth was helped partially by the foreign exchange rate, obviously.

Our like-for-like revenue again decreased by 1.7%. And then if you look at the total year, so Tokmanni segment grew by EUR 10 million, roughly the revenues for the full year, while Dollarstore grew around EUR 45 million for the whole year.

And again, there, partly due to the more favorable exchange rate. In percentage terms, the Dollarstore revenue increased by 12.2% and by 6.8% on comparable currencies.

Then looking at our revenue split. So Tokmanni in Q4 was, you could say, perfect balance, so 50-50 grocery and non-groceries, while Dollarstore, the percentage of non-groceries grew slightly from a year ago and reached 52.2 percentage points.

Then looking at our private labels. So here again, we saw a very good development during the fourth quarter. So our private labels share of total sales reached over 30%, so 30.7% during the fourth quarter, an increase of 3.1 percentage points.

And this, again, was driven mainly by Dollarstore, where we continue to increase the common offering and introduce Tokmanni private labels into the Dollarstore offering.

Then when you look at our comparable gross profit, again, on a Q4 basis, the gross profit grew to EUR 183.8 million and the gross margin to 36.0 percentage points, a slight increase from a year ago.

And then when you look at the full year, our gross margin increased, but the gross margin percent declined slightly from 35.6% to 35.1%. And of course, the Dollarstore growth in the gross profit was quite good in the fourth quarter, so reaching EUR 56.9 million, so growth of EUR 5.4 million and the gross margin percent at Dollarstore during the fourth quarter declined slightly to 38.3 percentage points.

Then when you look at our operating expenses, the picture is a bit different. So the operating expenses were 20.2% of revenue in the fourth quarter, a very slight increase of 0.1% from the previous year.

And this was driven by the Dollarstore segment. Our personnel expenses, which are a major part, of course, of the operating expenses also grew slightly to 12% of revenue from a year ago of 11.8% of revenue.

On the Tokmanni segment side, we're very happy with the results. We managed to decrease the absolute operating expenses during the fourth quarter and of course, also then the relative percent of sales, declined also.

So Tokmanni segment, the comparable operating expenses were EUR 68.4 million during the fourth quarter, a decline of EUR 1.8 million.

Dollarstore segment, on the other hand, the operating expenses grew quite a bit and also the percent of sales grew quite a bit. And obviously, we continue to work very hard with Dollarstore to ensure the future growth and profitability of the business.

And for the Dollarstore segment, the operating expenses in euro terms were EUR 35.4 million in the fourth quarter, compared to EUR 29.5 million a year ago. Then when you look at our comparable EBIT -- and again, the fourth quarter EBIT reached EUR 48.2 million, which is the all-time high result for the group, which is, of course, we're happy with that.

The group functions expenses increased also slightly to [ EUR 1 million ]. And then when you look at the full year, the picture is not so great, unfortunately. So our comparable EBIT declined during the whole year to EUR 84.8 million, and the EBIT margin was 4.9% decline from 6% a year ago.

And again, the decline was mainly driven by the Dollarstore segment, but also Tokmanni segment declined slightly and really the decline in the Tokmanni segment was during the first half of last year.

Then our inventories. So we've been working quite hard with the inventory during the past 6 to 9 months, and I'm very happy with the results. So we actually managed to decrease the inventory slightly from a year ago, about EUR 4 million in absolute terms.

But you have to remember here that we have 12 more stores at the end of last year compared to a year ago. So if you take that into account, the result is actually very good. And in the Tokmanni segment, the inventories declined by almost EUR 6 million.

And in the Dollarstore segment, the inventories increased by a little bit more than EUR 2 million. And again, you remember that most of the 12 new stores were in the Dollarstore segment. So 10 new stores at Dollarstore segment and only EUR 2 million increase in the inventory from a year ago situation, and you couple that with the fact that we continue to increase our own direct imports, which naturally leads to a sort of an increase in the inventories if everything is constant.

So we've been doing extremely well with the inventory management also at Dollarstore last year. Then a little bit about our financial situation. So here, you can see our group debt situation in total.

And as you can see, the lease liabilities continue their upward trend. And at the end of last year, our total interest-bearing debt was EUR 955.9 million. That's a growth of over EUR 120 million, and the majority of that is coming from the lease liabilities.

If you look at our total debt, excluding the lease liabilities, there's a slight increase from last year. But during the last year, starting from Q1, we managed to decrease the total debt quarter-over-quarter.

So it's now 3 quarters of declining debt and the interest-bearing debt at the end of last year, excluding lease liabilities, totaled EUR 315 million. And we also did a little bit of a shuffling of our debt during the fourth quarter last year. So we launched a bond to the investor community, our first bond ever, which was EUR 100 million in nominal value.

And part of that money we used to repay down our bank debt and then part of the money is going to working capital purposes. And if you look at our net debt, then I'm very happy that our net debt has actually gone down from last year. So it's down about EUR 10 million.

And if you look at our net debt to comparable EBITDA ratios, we had a very strong decline during the fourth quarter as is the case usually. We're still above our long-term target of 2.25 and slightly above last year.

But again, that is really driven by this IFRS leasing calculations. So the actual bank net debt is down about EUR 10 million from a year ago, including the cash part.

And here again, our operating cash flow. And again, this was a very good quarter for us, this fourth quarter last year. So our operating cash flow was EUR 108.6 million. And again, that was driven mainly by a good management of our inventory.

And also, if you look at the full year, we had a quite decent cash flow from the full year from the operating perspective, EUR 139.5 million, which is about EUR 50 million more than we had the previous year, so '24.

Then our capital expenditure. And here, we continue to see the sort of normal trend. So our total capital expenditure for last year was about EUR 30 million. And for the fourth quarter, the total capital expenditure was EUR 12.1 million. And out of that, the Tokmanni segment was EUR 8.6 million and the Dollarstore segment, EUR 3.5 million. And as previously, our capital expenditure continues to be related to our network expansion, development and maintenance of our store network and our digital services.

And we expect the sort of the cash capital expenditure to remain roughly on the same level in the coming years as well. Then I'll hand the stage back over to Mika to talk about our guidance.

Thank you, Tapio. Please don't go too far because we're going to soon start with the questions. But yes, first, Tokmanni Group's guidance. We expect Tokmanni Group's revenue to be in the range of EUR 1.78 billion to EUR 1.86 billion. And the comparable EBIT, we expect to be in the range of EUR 85 million to EUR 105 million.

And the payment of the dividend, the Board of Directors proposes to the AGM that the maximum dividend of EUR 0.34 per share be paid for 2025. And the BOD proposes that the dividend will be paid in 2 installments. The first one, EUR 0.17 per share would be on the payment date would be the 13th of May 2026.

And the BOD proposes that the 2026 AGM authorizes BOD to later decide on the distribution of maximum dividend of EUR 0.17 per share in another installment during fall 2026. So this is the guidance and the proposal for the dividend for Tokmanni Group. As already mentioned, the strategy period ended with -- in the end of for Tokmanni Group. So -- but during 2026, Tokmanni Group will publish the new strategy for the next strategy period.

And obviously, the coming CEO will be explaining this by the end of this year. But meanwhile, we -- just a couple of words, we're concentrating on the strategic projects or actions to improve Tokmanni Group profitability this year. And obviously, it starts from the sources of growth, as we call it, the low price program, which is extremely good, and it's already launched for both segments.

And the performance seems to be actually very good. And as already mentioned, in Dollarstore, we have a lot of actions ongoing. And obviously, we expect this year to be the turnaround year for Dollarstore.

Also, I mentioned SPAR as a source of growth for Tokmanni. And already in a couple of weeks' time, the next SPAR store will be open, and we will speed up the conversion of the current food stores to SPAR during this year.

The sources of profitability, obviously, joined buying and sourcing. And then the more we do things together, the more we have the same assortment, the more volume we have with joint buying.

So obviously, we're going to continue with that. Cost control seems to work very well in Finland. And also, we are taking the same actions in Sweden and Denmark. The inventory management, as Tapio was explaining just a while ago, is working pretty well.

We will continue with that and especially in Sweden with the new warehouse management system, the supply chain are doing -- is doing very, very good. The sources of success, as we talk about, as we call it one company, obviously, it's like 3 countries, but it is one company, and we -- all the time, we do actions to make this look like one company, even though it's like 3 countries at the moment. And of course, with the different kind of AI projects, they will affect the work and cost transformation over there and also improve the productivity.

These are probably issues that we'll touch a little bit later. One of our key values is that we do things together, and we -- especially with SPAR, we call it nowadays Better Together.

So these are the actions to improve Tokmanni Group profitability during this year. Thank you very much. And I think now it's time for questions.

So let's move on. And if I see correct the first one to set the questions is Arttu Heikura from Inderes.

It's Arttu Heikura, Inderes. First of all, could you elaborate on your actions regarding the low price program?

Sure. It's actually already going on in Tokmanni, we're talking about like -- we're talking about this [indiscernible] the lowest price in Finland operations, and we have already started that at the beginning of this year with very good results as a discounter.

And as you are also very well aware of the economic situation in Finland, especially right now with quite strong winter and high electric bills, it's very, very good for Tokmanni to offer the lowest prices in Finland, and we'll continue with that.

In Sweden, actually, the Aftonbladet has been helping us with the billigast low-price program, which is like the cheapest or lowest price in Sweden and in Denmark.

And we've started that already also a couple of weeks ago, or actually a month ago, the price comparisons, price comparison done by Aftonbladet was done in January. And basically, in -- from the competitor group Dollarstore was clearly the cheapest retailer. So that's giving us a pretty good setup for the so-called billigast program.

Then about the guidance for this year. What is the main driver for the profit growth? Do you believe that Dollarstore is able to improve its results? And if so, how?

Yes, first of all, from the group -- from the whole group point of view, year 2025 wasn't good at all for Tokmanni Group. I think or maybe you also remember that especially the first half of 2025 was very bad for Tokmanni segment. And yes, I don't think that -- or we believe that this year, the first half will be much better compared with previous year.

Obviously, especially in Finland for Tokmanni segment, it is quite weather-related, especially with the spring season, but we don't believe that we'll have like -- we will be missing the spring season 2 years in row in Finland.

So that's why we believe that Tokmanni will be on a better position than this year. And regarding the Dollarstore, we've been working so hard with Dollarstore. It has been causing some additional costs. And then probably, it will still be on like -- let's say, the work will be in progress, but we are very confident that there will be a turnaround this year.

Then about the spring season and maybe on the products and inventory. Have you already gotten crucial part of spring products in your inventory?

Yes. Or they're basically -- they are in the ports or the last one, the containers are on their way. We don't see any problems at the moment with the spring/summer season, containers.

Everything is basically set with that. Obviously, Sweden, due to the fact that the spring time in Sweden, especially in the southern part of Sweden and in Denmark, is obviously ahead of Finland, so there the -- basically the seasonal products are already over there. And the last containers coming to Finland.

And so yes, we're quite confident that we're able to deliver the spring/summer season as planned.

That's good to hear. Then maybe about Dollarstore and its decline in like-for-like customer flows. So have you analyzed deeply that what is causing this negative effect? And I think -- well, maybe you can say in your own words, please?

Thank you. Yes, well, first of all, it's -- obviously, it's a big change for Dollarstore customers. As mentioned, it used to be the entry-level product and very, very low-priced products. The biggest part, absolutely the biggest part of the business was done with the product which cost either SEK 10 or SEK 20, meaning like EUR 0.90 or EUR 1.80. These products, we had quite a lot of problems with -- especially with the quality and the sustainability with these products.

Now we've -- basically, we've cleared a big part of this assortment in Dollarstore -- in the stores. And nowadays, it's a lot of Tokmanni private labels, which are -- all are tested and sustainable products. And we know where they're coming from, we know exactly how they are and we can rely on the quality as well as the customers can rely on the quality.

As we, well, had the price comparison with Aftonbladet, we're able to compete with the price level as well, even though the price level is slightly higher due to the better quality, but it is a big change for customers.

Obviously, we've been interviewing customers on how they see the change. Obviously, they don't know the product. Yes, there are, like, for example, Kotikulta products, which actually are considered good quality products, but it's Kotikulta. It's a completely new brand in the Swedish market. And obviously, the customers they need to get used with Tokmanni private labels.

But with the pilot stores that we've opened, we're very happy with the sales. And these stores are even bigger joint assortment than the 6,000 products. Some of the product groups where we are actually even surprised that they are working or performing that well are, for example, apparel.

So the Tokmanni private label brands, Pola, you have the picture over here, and Catmandoo and Vaeltaja, they're actually doing pretty well in Sweden and in Denmark. So these are very, let's say, convincing development.

But yes, it is new products for customers, a new setup. So it's not -- doesn't happen like this that the customers will be right away happy with everything. But we are doing some -- a lot of commercial actions to ensure customers and encourage them to buy the new products. That was a long answer, sorry for that.

I guess you are aware of the situation with [ ÖoB ] and Europris, they have kind of similar concept change in Sweden. Q4 was good for them in like-for-like terms. How do you see the market environment in Sweden and competitive perspective of that?

Yes. First of all, competition is obviously very hard in Sweden as it's all over. That's no news basically. And yes, of course, [ ÖoB ] is one of the competitors, but so there are much bigger competitors as well.

And yes, obviously, we're very well aware of the development with Europris and ÖoB could imagine actually that the Europris and ÖoB is slightly ahead of Tokmanni Dollarstore with the development.

But as we are going to the same direction. And I think that Swedish market, if we compare, for example, with Finland, it's more positive. There's room for -- well, in this case, both retailers for ÖoB and Dollarstore.

And yes, there are much bigger competitors where we can also like win some market share, actually to both companies. But yes, of course, the competition is there. We have slightly different strategies with Europris and Tokmanni regarding Sweden. But I think there is plenty of room for both companies.

Then my last question is, you had some legal situation in Denmark. Is it just limited to 1 store or could that be kind of larger impact from the legal perspective? Could you maybe open up the situation for us?

Yes, it's considering 1 store. But yes, of course, it could affect on the -- well, basically, the whole Danish market. It's not only big dollar that we have in Denmark, but it's the whole Danish market. And it's about the grocery sales.

First of all, I think that it will take some time before the decisions will be over there, and we have plenty of time to adapt the situation. Obviously, we're happy to sell nonfood products, and we've been studying the Danish market as well, like, okay, where can we especially invest with the nonfood products and how can we be successful with the nonfood product, if we need to limit the groceries?

But, of course, it's very -- well, it needs to, first of all, for example, define like what is considered groceries and this kind of things. So it's going to take some time. But I think we're pretty well prepared with the future situation in Denmark. And of course, it -- we do have like a limited amount of stores in Denmark, at the moment 12 stores, so we are able to make quick moves over there as well.

Then we take the next one, Miika Ihamaki.

This is Miika from DNB Carnegie. So quickly on the sales guidance for '26, which implies approximately 3% to 8% growth from last year, even though like-for-like revenue declined in both segments now in Q4, whilst we see the reported revenue growing 3% mainly due to new openings and FX tailwinds. So I would like to understand how much of the '26 sales growth expectation is driven by new store openings and improvement in like-for-like sales?

Because given that we're seeing the like-for-like customer flows decreasing a Dollarstore now second quarter in a row and in fact, quite deeply given these assortment changes, why should we expect the sales to return to positive territory already next year?

Or this year, actually.

Yes, this year.

Yes. Well, as I already mentioned several times, Dollarstore is -- it's a lot of things over there under construction. And we feel that we've done some very, very good action points, for example, especially with the pilot stores. As mentioned, already, it's almost like double the sales with the pilot stores, which we will go to -- I mean, we will be developing Dollarstore to that direction because the results with sales are very encouraging.

So yes, we definitely do believe that we are able to make the change in Dollarstore.

But of course, as already mentioned, year 2025 was -- sales wise very bad also in Finland and especially in the first half and the second half wasn't that good either. We expect the economic atmosphere to improve during 2026.

And obviously, we expect a better development from Tokmanni as well. But of course, the main -- and as you also mentioned, the main focus is on Dollarstore and I think that we know pretty well what to do as soon as we get the IT systems and the supply chain working efficiently, then we're able to also speed up with conversion with this kind of new concept that we've been testing now for a while already in Sweden.

Right. And then second question is on your SPAR performance. You said that the stores have delivered excellent results. Can you further elaborate on this one and confirm whether their Q4 sales growth exceeded the market growth of 1.9%?

Sorry, could you please repeat? I kind of missed one part of your question.

Yes. So the question was that as you say, SPAR stores in Finland have delivered excellent results. Can you further elaborate on this one and then confirm whether the SPAR Q4 sales growth exceeded the market growth of 1.9%?

Yes. Well, if I touch the last point, as I mentioned last year, both the food sales in the SPAR stores, the food sales and the total sales, it was like double-digit sales increase. It has continued this year as well. So hopefully, that answers your questions regarding the market situation.

And yes, we're very happy with that. Obviously, we are learning a lot from SPAR at the moment. There are actually a bunch of SPAR people this week and more coming next week to Finland since they're supporting us with the Jarvenpaa opening.

I think it's -- that is the very crucial point for the learning for Tokmanni Group regarding the SPAR. SPAR International is like -- it's a global retailer -- global retailer group with more than 14,000 stores all over the world. And of course, they have a huge amount of professionalism and expertise and they've been studying also, together with us, the Finnish market.

And obviously, we have been learning quite a lot with this new -- with the first 3 stores, and now we will be speeding up the conversion of the current stores. Let's see how it happens. We don't publish any, let's say, market share targets. We are working 1 store at the moment, one by one. But we're happy with the development. It looks very good for us at the moment.

Thank you, Miika. And the next one is Maria Wikstrom.

Yes. I also wanted to touch on the sales growth guidance for 3% to 8% for this year. And I wonder that I mean, if the development in the beginning of the year gives you a guidance, I mean, that gives you confidence to guide for growth within that range despite the negative like-for-like development for both of the concepts during Q4?

Yes. Of course, the first quarter for the whole Tokmanni Group, it's absolutely -- sales-wise, the lowest and most difficult when it comes to the results. So obviously, cannot really make too big conclusions from the first quarter, but the second quarter, of course, is the second most important for Tokmanni. So at the moment, based on the first 2 months, it's too early to say that much. Let's see how the spring starts. At the moment, it looks pretty well -- pretty good actually for the coming weekend.

And then also here, I think, I mean Kesko commented that they had like a negative mix in the hypermarket nonfood sales during Q4, which I interpret that the winter actually started only after Christmas here in Finland, and you as well, I mean, sell a lot of winter clothes. So what do you see -- what's the impact in Q4? And do you see that you have more items on sale now during the Q1 that we should be worried about the gross margin development in the first quarter?

Well, first of all, you're absolutely right with the winter, as I call it, a strong winter, but that's been in January, February and until Christmas, obviously, we had an extremely warm weather. And yes, they were actually in the beginning, and Tapio might remember better than I do, but we did have pretty strong sales over there, especially with the winter products.

Basically, we sold out, for example, heaters and this kind of products, also the winter clothing. We were able to clear the inventory pretty nicely. Yes, it affected the fourth quarter, but -- my, let's say, gut feeling is that the low sales, let's say, the lower basket size during the fourth quarter, especially for Tokmanni, that was due to the carefulness of our customers.

The atmosphere, if you remember during the end of last year, was very, very negative. I think it's slightly improving at the moment, but it showed it was the -- we could see, and of course, we were doing some surveys as well, where we basically noticed that the customers are really careful.

That was probably one of the key drivers for the lower basket in Tokmanni. The comparable customer visits in Tokmanni during the fourth quarter was basically on par with previous year. So yes, but that's how I feel the difference with the winter timing, but I don't think that we could draw any special conclusions regarding the gross margin with the first quarter. But Tapio may answer that.

Yes. So obviously, we have the January results and February sales when we, let's say, confirm the guidance, if that's what you're asking about. But of course, we don't comment on the future performance more than the guidance, which is set for the whole year. And I think like Mika said, Dollarstore is a turnaround case at the moment, and of course, we expect it to turn around during the year.

Yes. And then I wanted to go -- I mean, more deeply on the sales performance of the Dollarstore. And I mean you mentioned that, I mean the pilot stores have been successful, I mean, with the new assortment. But if we think about like more broader perspective, then where the sales performance very different like in a normal store if you compare the private label assortment versus like the branded or the previous assortment of a Dollarstore?

So which product group, you mean?

Yes. So I'm kind of interested in the performance of the private label assortment outside these pilot stores. So the ones where you have a smaller assortment, and I think still a lot of the products that you sell in the Dollarstore has really -- has not been adjusted for the -- like the Swedish market, so that they would have like the Swedish product name and product title at first, but like a lot of product, I think, I mean, has also the Finnish titles, like mentioned first in the product.

So kind of interested if the Swedish consumer comfortable buying a product that has the Finnish title with like a bigger letters? Very difficult to ask the question, but hopefully, you understand what I mean.

Okay. Well, it's clear with Tokmanni that -- with the whole Tokmanni Group that our, let's say, our aim is to find a competitive advantage with the price level and the wider assortment.

And yes, you're absolutely right, it's a lot of new products for -- with the Finnish titles, but like -- as you, especially, Maria, you know that we're a bilingual country, so we always have like in Swedish as well, the product labels, but they've been the average Dollarstores, the private labels, they've been successful.

As you can see, the basket size is higher. But basically, the customers are missing very, very low-priced products. And yes, we've added some of those products to basically to bridge the situation, but we cannot compromise with the quality. We think that when we're able to offer even wider assortment and show in several different categories, as we've done in the pilot stores, that the assortment is wider and the price level is very competitive, we believe that, that will be the successful way forward.

And then finally, on the adjusted EBIT guidance range of EUR 85 million to EUR 105 million. First of all, can you discuss, I mean, what happens? I mean, if you end up on a -- I mean, this very low level that what was reached in 2025?

And then how much this guidance range? I mean, what is the -- how much is -- I mean, if we end up in the middle of the range, which has a EUR 10 million growth, how much of that is based on the Tokmanni brand and how much on the successful turnaround of the Dollarstore?

Well, Tapio, maybe if I first comment and you may continue then. Yes, first of all, if you take a look at the Tokmanni segment and year 2025, the first 2 halves were -- sorry, the first 2 quarters, meaning the first half of 2025, as already mentioned several times, was very difficult for Tokmanni segment.

But with the second half of 2025, we have been improving the results basically during the both quarters and especially the fourth quarter was actually quite good improvement with Tokmanni segment profit.

So obviously, we're confident that we will continue with this. The cost control is very tight at the moment. And obviously, we're working on this growth issues like the low price program and SPAR and so on. So yes, we're -- first of all, we're quite confident with Tokmanni. Now for Dollarstore, it has -- the performance has been for the whole year of 2025, it was basically very bad and much worse than the previous year.

Basically, we've done already better business, and we are very much on the building phase, but we definitely believe that this year, we are already able to get better results and also bring new customers to see the Dollarstore with a wider assortment and with a very competitive pricing and the price level. So it's -- we believe that the result improvement for this year comes from both segments. But Tapio...

Yes. So of course we have -- we built scenarios for both segments individually and then the guidance is a combination of those 2. So if everything goes well, then we're at the high end, and if everything goes not so well, then we're at the low end, it's pretty simple. It's not super difficult to think like that.

Thank you, Maria. And the next one is Svante Krokfors.

A couple of questions. I know we are a bit overdue here. But regarding Dollarstore and I mean in a concept change that you are implementing, it's understandable that average or like-for-like customers, we see decline and you try to get like-for-like basket size up. But how long do you think that this process and adjustment will take until the basket size like-for-like exceeds the decline in like-for-like customer visits?

How long? I wish I could tell you the date and knowing my situation, I wouldn't -- as you can understand, I wouldn't like to promise anything that I won't be myself responsible. But maybe, Tapio, would you like to comment on this one?

Yes, of course, it's very difficult to say exact date, but we have, of course, a firm belief that all the actions that we are doing, they will result in the, let's say, turnaround of the business. Of course, I expect that to happen during this year.

Okay. And then regarding the -- could you elaborate a bit on the gross margin development in Dollarstore, which has been a bit on a negative trend? And what's the reason behind that? And what your actions are to improve that?

Well, still in the end of last year, I think that we were having quite a lot of sales regarding the old inventory and things like this. At the moment, we're pretty confident with the gross margin with Dollarstore. Obviously, the first quarter last year was quite a dramatic drop with Dollarstore gross margin.

So that's, of course, something that we don't want to have like dramatic drops with gross margin anymore. So obviously, we're taking care of that. Yes, it might be that we -- or we -- obviously, we want more customers in the stores, and we will be investing on that, but I think we're managing that part pretty well at the moment.

Okay, I think that's all the questions. So thank you very much. There is one more question from [ Oscar Matheson ].

I was curious about, can you say anything about how you expect leverage to develop going forward, given that your net debt-to-EBITDA ratio is still above your target and that you're now entering your low season?

Of course, it jumps up always, so Q4 is the lowest. So it will go up. But of course, we are managing that very carefully. And inventory management that we are doing at the moment, it will help in the leverage.

But of course, the other flip side of the coin is, especially if you look at the -- including the lease liabilities, we do have 12 more stores compared to last year, that drives up the lease liabilities.

So we expect that to continue to creep up slowly as we add new stores. But let's say, the leverage, excluding the lease liabilities there, we expect that to go down during the year, not like super fast, but slowly.

Okay. I think that, that was all the questions. Thank you very much. Have a sunny and commercial weekend. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, and welcome to Tokmanni Group's Third Quarter 2025 Results Presentation. My name is Mika Rautiainen and during this presentation, I will first go through the key facts for the third quarter. And after that, Tokmanni Group's CFO, Mr. Tapio Arimo will come and present the financial figures in a little bit more detail. And after that, it's time for questions.

So after the first half, a difficult first half of 2025, Tokmanni Group had a twofold quarter. On the other hand, in Finland, Tokmanni segment had record high revenues and also EBIT and at the same time, we could say from Tokmanni segment that we're -- after this difficult first half, we're back on track. But unfortunately, the transition period takes a little bit more time in Dollarstore in Sweden and in Denmark. And Dollarstore's result declined, and that was, of course, a disappointment.

So let's take a little bit closer, look at this. Yes, this is a familiar slide. Last year, during the third quarter, Dollarstore's share of the revenues was 26%. So now it's slightly higher with 27%. Two more -- 2 new stores compared with the end of June situation. About the group and the key facts during the third quarter, Tokmanni Group's revenue increased by 4%, which was taken into consideration the market situation, well, satisfying sales result. Tokmanni segment's revenue increased due to a good end of summer sales.

Basically, in Finland, we didn't have like a real summer until the end of June. So actually, for the inventories for summer, spring and summer products, it was very good that July was actually a very nice summer. So we were able to also do a very good sales for the summer products. And at Dollarstore segment, the customers purchased more higher-value items. Basically, the share of Tokmanni private labels increased very well. And these are, of course, it's not like entry-level products there more towards best value for money products. Anyway, this resulted in an increased basket size. The gross margin percentage declined, especially due to Tokmanni segment's heavy summer clearance sales, what we were actually taking through, especially in July and in the beginning of August. Cost management was very successful in Finland, but expenses at Dollarstore segment increased due to the opening of the new stores compared with previous year. And of course, during the fourth quarter, we also are opening 4 new stores in Sweden and in Denmark.

So obviously, all the preparation costs for these new stores came to the third quarter. The group's EBIT was lower than in the previous year and as the gross margin percentage declined and due to Dollarstore segment's cost, they were increasing.

So let's take a look at the Tokmanni segment. Comparable customer visits increased by 1.3% and like-for-like revenue by 1.5%. So the average basket size increased by 0.2%. Grocery sales increased by 2.5%, and actually this is for the first time for several quarters where the non-grocery sales actually grew faster compared with groceries. And that was 4.3%. This was mainly due to the fact that, especially in July and beginning of August, we were selling the summer products with big discounts. And that, of course, was successful sales. Gross margin-wise, it wasn't that good, of course. As I said over here, it's the comparable gross margin percentage declined by 1 percentage points, mainly due to the discount sales of summer and spring season products.

Operating expenses decreased due to successful cost control, particularly the focus was on the personnel costs and marketing costs, and that was well managed by the team. And Tokmanni's EBIT improved and actually it was on the record high level. So from Tokmanni Group's perspective, of course, it was good that we were able to get segment back on track. But then when we look at the -- well, before we look at the Dollarstore, something regarding the store network. Yes, we still continue to expand also in Finland. During the third quarter, we actually closed one store in Turku and opened a new store in Kemiönsaari. Now during the fourth quarter, we've already opened a store in Naantali, and we will be opening a new store in Tuusula and also a new bigger store. It's a relocation in Nilsiä, Kuopio.

In the middle of January this year, we signed a license agreement with SPAR International. And at that time, we also basically told to the market that we will start testing the EUROSPAR supermarkets in 3 stores in Finland by the end of the year.

The first store was opened in Ylöjärvi in June, the second one in Masku in October. And last week, we opened a third store in Tornio. It's in northern part of Finland. I have to say that we've been able to get a lot of information learnings from SPAR and of course, something which is like very important for us is that these 3 stores are nowadays and they all are in top 10 stores in Tokmanni. So sales-wise, they've been a success for Tokmanni, we've been getting extremely valuable information. knowledge regarding the grocery business from SPAR International and also from the retail business in general. And this was, of course, one of the biggest targets for the start with the cooperation with SPAR International. And of course, we, at the moment, we have SPAR private label products in all Tokmanni stores in Finland. They've been extremely welcomed by our customers and the sales for these private label products are very good.

So actually, we're pretty satisfied with the SPAR experiences with these 3 stores and also the private labels. And next year, of course, for Tokmanni, we will start to roll out for all other grocery stores in Finland.

And then it's time to go to Dollarstore segment. Total revenue increased by 6% and like-for-like revenue decreased by minus 1.4%. In local currencies, the increase was 3%. The same story goes with Dollarstore. Actually grocery sales increased by 2.1% and non-groceries by 4.3% in local currencies. Like-for-like average basket size grew by 3.6%. But as already mentioned, there is a transition period going on with Dollarstore. Dollarstore has been known -- very well-known for the entry-level products, which is like a very, very low-priced products with SEK 10, SEK 20. The biggest part of the sales come from SEK 10, SEK 20 products, which is basically EUR 0.90 or EUR 1.80. And yes, we've been replacing these with the best value for money, Tokmanni private labels, which are slightly well, higher priced. And that's, of course, something that has slowed down a little bit, the customers who used to be shopping in Dollarstore, but the aim for Dollarstore basically is that we will get new customers. And of course, one of the key factors that we're trying to improve with Dollarstores, the customer confidence. And with this very well tested and very good quality Tokmanni private label products, we believe that we are able to also improve the customer confidence in Dollarstore.

But obviously, these products, the previous entry-level products, especially with some quality issues. These will be taken out from the assortment, and that shows a little bit with the sales in Dollarstore. But at the moment, the assortment of the joint product range for both -- for Dollarstore and Tokmanni, it's more than 4,300 SKUs. I consider this as a very, very good direction. Comparable gross profit improved by EUR 1.5 million compared to the corresponding period of previous year. The gross margin percentage was lower compared with last year. And operating expenses, as already mentioned, increased mainly due to the new store openings and the preparation for the new store openings during the fourth quarter.

Dollarstore and Big Dollar in Denmark continue to expand fast, actually. There were like 2 store openings, one Big Dollar in Skive, Denmark or during the third quarter and in Västerås in Sweden for the third quarter, and actually if I said 4 new openings, it's actually 5 new openings during the fourth quarter and Östhammar and the Hälla store in Västerås we've already opened. And there will be like 2 more store openings in Gothenburg and then one more in Guldborgsund Big Dollar store in Denmark during the fourth quarter. So 5 more stores coming before the end of this year. So very active operations in Dollarstore.

And this renewed Dollarstore concept is basically part of the transition process that we're having in Dollarstore. Actually, during the third quarter, we launched this pilot store in Sweden to test an assortment of over 30,000 SKUs. Basically combining the approximately 20,000 SKUs from Tokmanni and 10,000 SKUs from Dollarstore. And of course, the target is to test a more unified and attractive product range and especially the unified product range is something what we are seriously looking for with this development. Actually, so we opened this, if I remember correct, it was by the end of September. And this is actually one of the best-selling stores for Dollarstore in total. So it's been very successful. Obviously, the transition is to take Tokmanni and Dollarstore more towards the same product assortment, and even the concepts we are looking for taking to the same direction. And obviously, from here, we have from this renewed concept. We have very good experiences, but we will be opening a couple of more pilot stores to get more information regarding the Swedish and Danish market also for this new concept.

But this will be happening in the beginning of next year. So the next one will be Tokmanni Group's key figures, and I will invite Tapio to come over to tell more about the financial figures. Tapio, please go ahead.

Thank you, Mika, and good morning on my behalf as well. So let's dive a little bit deeper into the numbers. So as Mika pointed out, our revenue growth in all in all was acceptable at 4% and reached EUR 432.8 million. Our like-for-like revenue also increased a little bit, 0.7 percentage points. Our gross profit also grew during the third quarter and reached EUR 150.4 million. And like Mika said, our comparable gross margin declined somewhat, and that was really driven mostly by the high summer sales during the July and early August frame at discounted prices. And our comparable EBIT came in at EUR 26.4 million, which is a decline from the previous year and the comparable EBIT margin was 6.1 percentage points.

Our cash flow was very good during the quarter, thanks to our good management of our inventories and totaled EUR 31.8 million. And our diluted earnings per share was EUR 0.24 per share. Looking a little bit deeper into our revenue. So as I said, our revenue grew by 4% during the quarter. When you look at the segments, so on the Tokmanni segment side, the revenue increased by 3.5%, decent growth. At Dollarstore, unfortunately, the revenue only grew by 3% in local currencies, and that also means that the like-for-like was slightly negative. On the euro terms, the Dollarstore revenue actually increased by 6%. So we got some positive tailwinds from the exchange rate during this quarter.

When you look at our product mix, so that moved in the sort of a favorable way for the first time in some time for Tokmanni segment. So we managed to increase slightly the share of non-groceries during the quarter compared to a year ago. And again, that was also driven by the good sales of our non-grocery products during the July and early August sales period. And at Dollarstore, we also continued to increase the share of non-grocery business, and that is really mostly driven by the increased share of Tokmanni private label products, which are mostly non-grocery products.

And our private labels continued to support our growth. So as a total for the group, we did increase the private labels clearly from a year ago. And again, that was mostly driven by the increased share of private label at Dollarstore. And as you can see, we have many private labels that we work with, and we do see a lot of further potential to increase the sales of private label over time, especially at Dollarstore, but also at Tokmanni. Then when you look at our gross profit, as I said, we managed to increase our absolute gross profit from a year ago. But unfortunately, the comparable gross profit margin declined slightly. And for the Tokmanni segment, the gross profit was almost on par, so a slight increase of EUR 800,000 from a year ago and the gross profit margin declined by 1 percentage point. And at Dollarstore, the increase was EUR 1.5 million in absolute terms and also there, the gross profit margin declined slightly, and that was mainly driven by the product mix from the very low products that typically have a slightly higher gross margin to the higher average price Tokmanni private label products.

In terms of the comparable operating expenses, a very mixed quarter. So we were working hard to control the costs and at Tokmanni segment, we managed to do that quite well. And the share of operating expenses relative to sales declined clearly by almost 1 percentage point. So from 20.3% a year ago to 19.4%. Unfortunately, Dollarstore the direction was the other way, a quite large increase as a percent of sales, which is partly driven by the let's say, slightly lower sales growth than hope for. And like Mika said, the large number of stores that we have opened during the past year, and also the ones that we have just recently opened or opening, the sort of opening costs contribute to this number. And the total operating expenses for the Tokmanni segment, EUR 61.1 million, which is actually a decline from a year ago of EUR 600,000, which is a very good result. And then for Dollarstore, the operating expense totaled EUR 30 million, an increase of EUR 4.5 million, which was really the key factor driving down there absolute EBIT Dollarstore during the quarter.

Then we will look at the EBIT and the EBIT margin. So I said the total comparable EBIT declined to EUR 26.4 million from EUR 29.5 million from a year ago. And that also included EUR 1.1 million of group functions costs, an increase of EUR 300 million over last year. But as Mika said, the Tokmanni segment actually reached an all-time high EBIT margin of EUR 26.3 million during the third quarter and the comparable EBIT margin also increased slightly from a year ago to 8.4%. And for Dollarstore, obviously, a different story. So the EBIT declined to EUR 1.1 million, a decline of EUR 4 million, and the comparable EBIT margin was unsatisfactory at 0.9 percentage points.

Then when we look at our inventories, like we said last quarter announcement, we've been working quite hard on inventory management, and that shows good results. So if you look at our 2 previous quarters, the inventory is essentially flat over the last 6 months. And typically, during these 6 months in a normal year, we see a quite significant increase in inventory. So we've actually done a very good job in containing the inventory growth and working very hard to increase the efficiency of our supply chain. And we do see a clear decrease in the fourth quarter as well on the inventories.

And the overall inventory level was EUR 477.7 million, which is an increase of EUR 32 million roughly from a year ago. But as said, only a slight increase from a quarter ago and essentially flat with 6 months ago situation. Then looking at our financing. Our total interest-bearing debt, EUR 945.5 million, which is an increase of EUR 100 million from a year ago and a slight increase also from the previous quarter, but the actual net debt that is excluding the IFRS 16 has actually gone down over the past 2 quarters, which we contribute, obviously, mostly due to good inventory management. And the total lease liabilities are, at the moment, EUR 613.3 million, and that's really a reflection of the increase in the number of stores that we have.

Then our net debt to comparable EBITDA ratios. The IFRS 16 number was 4.35 at the end of the quarter, a slight increase from the previous quarters. Our financial position continues to be good and net debt, excluding IFRS liabilities, EUR 323 million, an increase of about EUR 50 million from a year ago.

And our cash flow, as mentioned before, we're very happy with the cash flow for the third quarter, which stood at EUR 31.8 million and close to the number 2 years ago, and much better than a year ago number of EUR 8.1 million. And this, again, driven by the inventories compared to the comparison period. And for the total for the first 9 months also, we had better cash flow than last year at EUR 31 million compared to EUR 12.1 million a year ago. And our capital expenditure continues to be well under control. Our total for the quarter was EUR 6.6 million, a slight decrease from a year ago. And this, as previously, is most related to our network expansion, development, maintenance of the store network and development of our digital services. So with that, I invite Mika back to talk about our guidance.

Thank you, Tapio, and don't go too far because it's time for questions soon. Yes, about the Tokmanni Group's guidance, First of all, we've specified the guidance for 2025. We basically expect the revenues to be in the range of EUR 1.71 billion to EUR 1.75 billion. And the EBIT, we expect to be in the range of EUR 85 million to EUR 95 million. So this is specified from the previous guidance. And then the payment of the second dividend installment, well, basically, the Tokmanni Group Board decided that Tokmanni group won't be -- or basically, yes, it's decided that it won't be exercising the authorization to pay the second dividend installment for the financial year ending 31st December 2024. And the aim is to strengthen the company's balance sheet and to ensure the funding of investments and growth.

Basically, the investments and growth are the new store locations, strategic projects and IT systems as well as the current structure of, basically, company's balance sheet. So this is, basically, a decision from the Board of Directors of Tokmanni Group. And at the moment, in Tokmanni Group, we have the full focus on profitability. Actions are ongoing, especially in Tokmanni segment, they've been successful and we're working on Dollarstore segment very hard. Basically, for the whole Tokmanni Group, the strategy period which is actually 2021 to 2025, it will obviously end by the end of this year. And the new strategy period will start with full focus on profitability. Both segments -- both Tokmanni and Dollarstore segments will concentrate on increasing sales, optimizing gross profit gross margin and, of course, tight cost control.

And then a new CEO for Tokmanni Group. Mr. Sampo Päällysaho will start in the beginning of July. So one of his first job is to start working on the group strategy during the -- sorry, during the second half of 2026, and it will be launched before the end of the year 2026 as well. But at the moment until July, Tokmanni Group will fully focus on improving profitability. So thank you very much. And right now, it's time for questions.

So please raise your hand with the teams and then we'll start right away. Very good. And Joonas is the first one. So Joonas, please go ahead.

It's Joonas Häyhä from OP. So firstly, regarding Dollarstore, you had less seasonal promotions in Dollarstore yet the gross margin weakened even though you should have some synergies in. So can you elaborate the situation around the gross margin in Dollarstore?

Yes. So obviously, there's many factors contributing to that. So if you compare to last year, we had a lot of sales. But obviously, those were focused on very much on the old products which were already written off to some extent. So there was a sort of a mitigating impact on the gross margin from the sale of the, let's say, the very old products because typically, you sort of write off the products as they age. So that was one thing that is different this year, obviously. The second thing is the product mix. So we have a clearly higher-value product mix and that impact with the increase of the Tokmanni private label has a very positive impact.

But then the negative impact is that typically the very low products actually have a very high gross margin percent. So when you sell less of the low-value products and you lose the volume there, that has a negative impact. And it's a mix of those things and also some, let's say, logistical costs have obviously increased as we changed the business model. So most of those costs also go above the gross margin. But we don't feel very worried about this small decline. So we do see that by bringing more and more the Tokmanni private labels, the long-term effect will be clearly positive. And of course, it will drive up also the sales per store, which is the key to driving the profitability and customer confidence, yes.

All right. And then continuing on Dollarstore. So it looks that the personnel count was slightly lower in Q2 versus Q3 versus last year. yet the personnel costs grew quite much in Dollarstore? Can you elaborate this development?

Yes. So there's, again, many factors. There one of the things we have used more, let's say, these sort of externals, especially in the logistics side. So they don't actually count in our own personnel. So that's one of the key reasons that change is there.

Okay. And then regarding Finland, you had the -- you sold the seasonal inventories at a discount. I was wondering what kind of impact did that have on the average basket size in Finland? Was that supportive or dilutive in Q3?

It was supportive, yes. Because basically, especially with the summer season products, they are slightly higher ticket products especially in barbecue, in garden. So yes, it had a positive impact also on the average basket.

Are you able to quantify how much?

We are able, but we don't disclose such level of detail, but let's say it was clearly a positive impact.

Thank you, Joonas. And then it's Maria Wikstrom.

My first question is, I mean, on the current trading conditions, given that I think it was a disappointment that Dollarstore like-for-like sales growth was negative in the quarter. Because, I mean, despite you have had some profitability issues, I mean, your sales have developed very favorably. So can you comment, I mean, how has -- I mean how has the sales developed so far in Q4? So is there a change in the trend? Or is this something that we should expect, I mean, for the final quarter as well?

Well, we can't comment on the Q4, but obviously, we are doing whatever we can to drive the sales. And I don't think we need to say that we are not happy with the Q3 sales at Dollarstore. So we are doing things as I think we mentioned in the previous earnings call, we are increasing the leaflet size and the distribution. So we have now every week this weekly leaflet that we had when we acquired Dollarstore, they were doing once-a-month leaflet.

So we've now gradually increased the leaflet rate to now once per week, which is essentially the same as for Tokmanni. And that, of course, has an impact on the marketing costs, but we feel that, that will drive -- help drive sales. And like I said, the change in the product mix, it does have some impact on the short term in the customer base. So we are, of course, trying to keep the old customers. But at the same time, we are definitely seeking also new customer segments. Like Mika mentioned, we have this pilot store and we will definitely use that experience to see what kind of new customer groups we get to -- get us customers in this kind of selection, which is much more close resembling the current Tokmanni selection than the current Dollarstore selection.

And then my second question would be, I mean, given that the performance, I mean since your acquisition of Dollarstore has been -- I mean, I would describe it maybe a lackluster. What gives you the confidence actually to continue rolling out new stores? I mean, before you have actually fixed the existing concept.

Yes. Well, as I told before, we are also like we are also like testing this kind of a new concept, and we have very good experiences from that. So with these coming stores, we will also increase the Tokmanni private labels and increase the assortment. So we are basically on the way towards like more joint assortment together with Tokmanni and Dollarstore. And since actually with let's say, with the increased assortment stores in Sweden and in Denmark, the sales are better. So that gives us the confidence that we are on the right track also with the Dollarstore and with the new store openings.

And well, obviously, it's a valid point that like maybe we should slow down. But with this store network issues and store sites, basically, the decisions are done 12 months before. So yes, it's like it's -- that's also something that we have like obligations over there. But in this case, when we know that actually the more -- the bigger assortment stores are bringing more sales, that's, of course, a good sign.

It's not like they will go to waste the new stores. So once you change the assortment, it's not that much extra investment in especially the new stores, the layouts have been designed. So that is not so difficult then to convert them into whatever concept we then decide. So it's not like we invest 10 now and then have to invest another 10 if we do change the concept over time. So it doesn't go to waste in a way the investment.

And then my final question is on the balance sheet. And I think you, Tapio mentioned that the financial situation continues to be good, which I think, I mean, I would love you to elaborate a bit because, I mean, given that the Board decided not to pay the second installment of the dividend, I obviously would think that, I mean, there are reasons behind which links to the strength of the balance sheet. And then I would be happy to hear a bit more on the covenants that we are now approaching the covenants why you decided not to pay the second installment of the dividend.

Well, let's put it this way that we want to be ready for growth going forward. So as Mika mentioned, we'll focus this next year on profitability, but I think we are, let's say, strengthening the balance sheet a bit so that we are ready for growth then of course, the new strategy will be then published in due course, but Tokmanni is a very growth-oriented company. So I don't see that the new strategy would mean that we would decrease our growth ambitions. Quite the opposite. We have a lot of opportunities with the SPAR brand in Finland, and we have a lot of opportunities to take Dollarstore further both in Denmark and Sweden and then potentially also other markets.

Like we said, we are thinking about our potential markets around the Baltic Sea. So there are still quite many countries around where we're not present in at all at the moment. So -- and given the Dollarstore acquisition was done with basically all cash or all debt, however, you put it, that, of course, changed the leverage position of the company quite significantly. So we want to be sure that when the time comes, we are ready for the growth. So this is not done to, in some way that there's some kind of crisis on the balance sheet. It's been quite stable over the last 6 months, but we want to ensure that we have then the firepower to grow in the future as well.

For the new strategy period.

So if I read you right, there is still some leeway, I mean to the covenants.

Yes. There is some leeway. Like I've said before, there is still some leeway. But of course, it's come down the leeway from -- before the Dollarstore acquisition.

Yes. Thank you, Maria. And yes, I guess we will take next Miika. Please go ahead.

This is Miika from DNB Carnegie. And I think that Maria touched really the key points there or earlier questions. So well, I'm first trying to understand that -- you are now carrying more direct import Tokmanni private labels versus this traditional Dollarstore ranges. So do you see any risk that what if the Swedish customers do not embrace this shift? And that's really my first question.

Well, basically, like I've said several times in this quarterly reports that -- or presentations that a Dollarstore is actually it's built on the entry-level products. And it has been in the -- well, in history, it's been mainly entry-level products. And this is, of course, for a very price-oriented customers. It's very good. But with this SEK 10 products or SEK 20 products, it's quite difficult to increase the sales per store. And as you probably know, Miika, that actually Tokmanni is double the sales per store compared with Dollarstore. So yes, we decided to bring some higher-ticket products from Tokmanni private label ranges.

And actually at the amount of the private labels from Tokmanni, it's actually quite big already and getting bigger all the time. And actually, as Tapio was also presenting the private label sales, they're increasing, especially in Dollarstore. So we're actually quite satisfied. Personally, I was mostly, let's say, worried, for example, for this kind of private labels like Kotikulta from Tokmanni because Kotikulta is a very traditional Finnish name. But actually, it's the best selling private label range in Sweden at the moment. So it's a little bit like a shift. And for those customers who have been coming to Dollarstore for mainly -- for the lowest price level products, it's a slightly bad news. But for those customers who haven't been -- who haven't had the confidence on Dollarstore, like old products. These new products are, of course, very, very nice alternative because the quality level is clearly higher. And there are no quality issues as in the previous assortment of Dollarstore.

So yes, there is a transition period where the, let's say, the old customers are getting a little bit worried, like, okay, how are the price levels in Dollarstore at the moment. But at the same time, we are able to invite like new customers to buy also like bigger basket sizes to Dollarstore. Hopefully, this was a little bit like an explanation for you. But yes, we are in the middle of a transition period in Dollarstore.

Yes. I understand completely the rationale there. But just it is slightly concerning as now you might be changing the concept and that might imply also different competition that you were previously experiencing. But to my next question. So you mentioned that in Tokmanni, Finland, sales were driven especially by strong sales in July, implying that August and September slowed down from the July level. So I'm wondering if either August or September saw any negative sales trend actually there? And if you can comment how Q4 has started in Finland.

Yes. Well, actually, first of all, I'll come back to your previous question when you said that the competition is harder. Actually, we believe that with Tokmanni Group volumes, we are pretty strong with, let's say, the private label ranges in the Nordics actually because based on our information, we are definitely, well, quite a big buyer of these products. And obviously, we're testing and comparing them all the time, and we're following the price levels all the time. And I think that we're very, very competitive. And of course, we see that also in Finland with, let's say, for example, Swedish retailers like how we are competing with them.

Regarding the sales part in July, that was, of course, very, very successful except the gross margin part. I'd say that -- let's say, the atmosphere in the Finnish market has been quite negative as you probably know as well as I do. And obviously, it shows in the market as well. But yes, we do actually get some more positive signs, very small ones, but still a little bit -- the direction is kind of changing to a slightly more positive direction. But yes, as you know, the discussions in Finland, let's say, it's a very, very strong pressure on the consumers and customers in Finland to spend some more money. And that, of course, has been shown in the Finnish market for, let's say, for this whole year. But still, I would say that we are seeing some positive signs, small ones, but still positive.

Thank you. And then the next one is Calle. Please go ahead.

It's Calle Loikkanen from Danske Bank. Just a few questions still on Dollarstore. I was wondering, you mentioned a few times that there is -- the Dollarstore has the transition period ongoing, but how long do you think the transition period actually will continue?

Well, it's difficult to say. It's difficult to say at the moment our, let's say, best experiences in Sweden are coming from the pilot store, where we are selling approximately actually more than 30,000 SKUs. So if we start thinking about converting, let's say, all Dollarstore -- all the stores with this let's say, 20,000 to 30,000 SKUs, obviously, it will be taking some time, but it's worth it because of the sales and result experiences that we have from the first one. But it's -- maybe it's a little bit too early to start estimating the time over there or Tapio would you like to be the brave one to say something regarding the timing?

Yes. I don't think there is one point in time where you can say you're done in a way, I mean, retail is continuous improvement. So -- but I think the big actions, I think we will focus on completing during next year in terms of the integration. And then, of course, the concept development is a whole other thing, whether we do it in steps or if we take bigger things at once that we haven't decided yet. And now the new strategy will also have a big impact on that, how quickly we want to do things and how radical the changes then will be in then.

But I would say that at the moment, Dollarstore is still in transition phase. And of course, the customer base also changes slowly. So we know that from Tokmanni that it takes some years to attract completely new customer segments and so on. So you need to show the range, you need to show the quality and the word of mouth and moves along. And of course, all the marketing activities we do, we need to completely trying different kind of marketing things at Dollarstore at the moment and see how they stick. So it's also a little bit of trying different things at the moment.

That makes sense. Then I was wondering about the difference between Sweden and Denmark. Has there been any difference in performance, any difference in how this joint assortment has been kind of received by the customers and so on. So any differences between these 2 countries?

Yes. Obviously, Denmark and Sweden, they are like different markets as well as Finland. But if I've understood correct, our Danish colleagues are saying like, please send the 20,000 Tokmanni SKUs as soon as possible to Denmark. So obviously, the -- from the Danish perspective, the Tokmanni private label ranges have been very successful. It is obviously a slightly different market, but yes, we're very, very happy with the Danish operations.

And obviously, especially the non-groceries, we will start pushing that more in Denmark because it looks as if it's very successful over there in Denmark. But of course, at the moment, it's only 10 stores. But still, yes, we get a good picture. The market is different, but the private label ranges work very well.

And then I was wondering -- I mean, maybe this is a bit of a philosophical question as well, but I'm a bit wondering why you actually acquired Dollarstore because you bought it a couple of years ago. Back then, you stated that the track record of the company is strong. They had been like doubling sales, was it every 4 years or something like that. So a lot of growth, a lot of new store openings and all of that.

And now you've been spent like 2 years changing the concept, which basically then has slowed down growth rates quite a lot. So I was just wondering that I mean why did you acquire Dollarstore, just to change the concept rather than go greenfield with your choice of concept from the very start.

First of all, Calle, it's very, very like you're in a very -- having a very good question over there. Obviously, in the beginning after -- right after the acquisition, we didn't start like unifying the concept. We had a very slow start with combining the assortment. Obviously, that's due to the fact that it takes basically 12 months, especially with non-groceries to do the joint buying and to get the goods, the joint bought goods to the stores. As soon as we started to get, let's say, a year ago, the first Tokmanni private labels in Dollarstores, we saw a very good sales development with these products.

So we started to push that. And at the moment, we can see that the more combined we do the assortment and even the concept, obviously, we have been doing some changes also in Finland based on the learnings from Dollarstore, so in Tokmanni stores, some of -- some learnings from Dollarstore, but anyway, the more we combine the better results we get. So actually, if you think about it, at the moment, if Tapio would know the exact figures, but Tokmanni average sales per store is something like EUR 6.5 million, roughly like that. And Dollarstore stores is [ EUR 3.3 million ] , half of it, basically. So obviously, we do have exactly the same product groups. So we see a huge potential at the moment with Dollarstore and Big Dollar, right? Taking the -- driving the assortment towards the same assortment in the core concept. Obviously, there are like country-specific products like in Finland, for example, we do sell more groceries. And in Sweden, it's a lot of Swedish products as well. And in Denmark, also Danish products.

But the core concept, we, at the moment, we see a huge potential with the stores in Sweden and in Denmark to double the sales per store with the help of, basically, larger assortment, which includes Tokmanni private labels as well as A brands. So that's the story. Unfortunately, the changing the assortment is taking -- well, it has been taking too much time. We should have started earlier, but we're here now.

That's helpful. But doubling sales per store, that's probably going to take many years, I guess?

Yes. But I think it will be much faster than if we started with the greenfield. So of course, we looked at both options, and this is then what was decided to go. And I think it is. If we look at it from 5 years from now, I'm pretty sure that it was the right decision. Of course, things haven't been progressing quite the way we would have liked, but it's very often in these acquisitions that they don't move quite as smoothly as one would hope.

And then finally, on my part, the guidance and the comparable EBIT range. You have now year-to-date, EUR 36.5 million of comparable EBIT, which means that you need EUR 48.5 million in Q4 to reach the lower end of the guidance. And last year in Q4, you did EUR 47.5 million. So in practice, you need to grow EBIT by 2% now in Q4 year-over-year. What makes you kind of comfortable that you can improve the EBIT at least at 2%, given that year-to-date EBIT is around 30%?

Well, as I already mentioned, there are some positive signs in the market as well. So that gives us the confidence to target also with a slightly better EBIT for the fourth quarter.

Can you be a bit more kind of concrete or give you examples on what the signs are that you are seeing?

No. Of course, some of it has to do with the market that some of the things that we have been doing both at Tokmanni and Dollarstore in the past 6 months that we are quite confident that we start to see the results also in the figures in the fourth quarter.

Thank you, Calle. And then the next one is [ Svante ], please go ahead.

Actually, I also had a question regarding the guidance, but you answered it already. Perhaps one question regarding Dollarstore and the decline in like-for-like customers, but increasing average basket size. So how would you balance this going forward? I mean I understand that if you want to get new sort of clients into the stores increasing the basket size. How long will you kind of accept? I know that there was clearance sales in Q3 last year in Dollarstore, but how long will you accept that the customer visits will decline?

No, we won't be accepting that at all. Actually, when you change the assortment or when you do some changes, obviously, you need to communicate that to customers, and that's exactly what we're doing at the moment. I think a year ago, we had basically like 1 leaflet per month or maybe 2 leaflet per month. Now we're actually sending our customers like marketing leaflets once a week, talking about our new assortment, talking about the -- or communicating about the new private labels, which are tested and proven to be good quality. And of course, the price level as well.

Obviously, Dollarstore has one of the best price images in Sweden. So we -- of course, we try to keep that as hard as possible, but it's all about communication, basically marketing. So we have -- we are now investing quite a lot in marketing because we won't be accepting minus figures in customer flows.

And you mentioned that Kotikulta brand is selling well in Sweden. Now have you have some product categories from the Finnish Tokmanni segment that haven't performed so well in Sweden that you can tell us?

Some products obviously take a little bit more time, especially if you think about like more technical products, which are strongly quality driven. For example, electrical hand tools. In Finland, we have a very successful private label range for electrical hand tools. The range is called Brykke. It's very, very well tested. And it's also like proven in external tests to be very good quality and one of the price leaders in Finland. But obviously, if you have like a history of entry-level products as Dollarstore does, it takes quite a lot of communication to get this kind of confidence on products like electrical hand tools.

So that's -- but we're definitely pushing that because we've already seen some sales that are satisfying, but we know that we need to do a lot of work to convince our customers that it's extremely good products. But that, I would say, the Brykke technical products are the ones which are a little bit like a slow moving compared with others.

Thank you, [ Svante ] . And actually, I don't think that there are any more questions. So thank you very much, and you all are warmly welcome to do the Christmas shopping in Tokmanni stores in Finland and Click Shoes, of course, as well in Finland and Dollarstore in Sweden and Big Dollar in Denmark. Thank you.