Bang & Olufsen a/s

Welcome to Bang & Olufsen's full year and Q4 financial presentation for 2024-2025. For the first part of this call, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, please press 5 star on your telephone keypad. This call is being recorded. And I will now hand the call over to your speakers. Please begin.

Hello everyone and thank you for joining the call. With me today is our CFO Nikolaj Wendelbo. I will begin by outlining our key highlights for the past year and providing an overview of our business performance as it aligns to our strategy. Following that Nikolaj will take us through the financials and our outlook in more detail. I will then offer some closing remarks before we open the session for questions. Please move to the next slide. Q4 highlights, a year of transition, achieving record high gross margin, positive operating profit, and strengthened branded channel performance is the headline. So let us begin by looking at our fourth quarter and full year performance. Overall, during this past year of transition, we have been focused on continued efforts to build a solid foundation for the future and ensure resilient business as we move ahead with our strategic plans. In quarter 4, 24-25, product sales delivered revenue growth of 9%, which led to our revenue increasing by 4% during the quarter. despite a decline in brand partnering. This meant that we landed at minus one in revenue for the full year in local currencies, closing the year in accordance with our initial outlook. We continued the upward trajectory for our gross margin, once again achieving a record high gross margin of 55.8% in quarter four, leading to a gross margin of 55% for the full year. The EBIT margin of 1% for the year is mainly due to an increase in OPEX investments as part of our strategy acceleration. Free cash flow ended at 16 million. The positive level was mainly due to timing and collection efforts at the end of the year. Looking at sellout numbers, we delivered an overall increase of 4% year-on-year, largely driven by a 9% growth in branded channels, which covers company-owned and monobrand stores and e-commerce. Like-for-like sellout growth for the full year was fueled by growth in Europe and in the Americas, while APAC decreased by 1%. Our four win cities collectively reported solid sellout growth of 30% year-on-year and 38% for Q4, with all cities reporting double-digit growth. With our capital resource at 600 million at year end, following the capital raise and the refinancing and increase of revolving credit facility, the funding secured will be used for value creating investments, helping us realize profitable growth. Please move to the next slide. And now we're moving into the strategy update. We have made positive progress with our strategic acceleration while also improving our company and financial stability. And we laid a lot of groundwork in 2425. We have four pillars under our luxury timeless technology strategy that are critical building blocks to help us accelerate profitable growth. These pillars are brand positioning, channel development, elevated product portfolio, and partnership expansion. Our focus on brand positioning is all about elevating our brand and global awareness. Our marketing strategy focuses on strategic priority areas. Firstly, deepening our cultural relevance through global aligned campaigns that are locally activated, high impact storytelling and best practice 360 activations that all contribute to commercial impact. Secondly, we are prioritizing data-driven decision-making to optimize customer acquisition and build even deeper relationships through personalization and scaled clienteling to drive long-term loyalty. This approach is designed to strengthen our connection with our communities and international audiences and ensure that Bang & Olufsen brand is synonymous with timeless luxury. Our focus on channel development ensures a continued attention to elevating our branded retail network. Our aim is to drive growth across wind cities by optimizing our retail network and expanding our presence in key cities globally, while guaranteeing our in store experiences and have true luxury feel in light with customer expectations. Our focus on elevated product portfolio reflects our delivery of the best product experiences that are timeless, collectible and redefining categories. We continue to push the boundaries of what technology can achieve in terms of sound, design and longevity. We create iconic design and craftsmanship with superior acoustic performance across a seamlessly connected product portfolio. And this unique combination is what positions us as the forefront of luxury audio. Under this area, we're also focusing on our Atelier program for those clients who are looking for pieces that are completely unique to them. We will invest more resources into our product creation and engineering to ensure we can deliver on our existing platform and portfolio roadmap. Our focus on partnership expansion has particular emphasizes on growth of our licensing partnerships, which today covers premium audio experiences for TV and automotive sound systems through the dedicated Audio by Bang & Olufsen proposition with potential to expand to wider categories. These four focus areas are, of course, underpinned by a robust business foundation. We continue to strengthen the backbone of the business by improving systems and processes and ensuring end-to-end integration. We believe that combined with a strong focus on our people and capabilities and our work to shape a client-focused organization, we will support our growth yearning. If we can now move on to the next slide, we will look at some key progress points for 2425. As mentioned, we have made positive progress and believe that we are now standing on strong foundation for our strategy acceleration. We are pleased to continue the uptick in gross margin to a record high 55%, having generated a gross margin of above 50% over the last consecutive nine quarters since Q4 22-23. We have also been improving the underlying quality of revenue through the optimization of our retail network, growing the share and improving the performance of our branded channels and reducing the presence of our multi-brand network. In November 2024, we completed a capital raise with net proceeds of 217 million, which was a critical step for our growth plans become more fully realized. In addition, by refinancing and increasing our revolving credit facility in May 2025 to 300 million, we brought our total capital resources to 600 million at year end. Please move to the next slide. Turning to our first pillar, reinforcing our position as a culturally relevant brand within the luxury audio market has continued to be a key priority for the year as we continue to pursue strong collaborations with like-minded partners. And as part of our continued partnership with Ferrari, we delivered a second special edition Ferrari collection in October with three new product collaboration and a made-to-order collection that creates an unmissable connection between Bang & Olufsen and the motorsport icon. Our partnership with the yacht maker Riva, which is focused on shared excellence in artisanship and performance, resulted in two exclusive product collaborations, the Biosound A5 and Biosound 2. We have been very proud to have prominent F1 driver, Charlie Clark, representing our brand as our global brand ambassador for 2024 and 2025, and to collaborate on a fast selling limited edition of our H100 headphone. Through strong collaborations with prestigious partners in the luxury sector, we meet one of our key strategic priorities to deepen and broaden our audience engagement while expanding our customer base. In support of this, we also delivered a series of locally anchored events serving as powerful touchpoints to connect with new audiences, strengthen existing relationships, and amplify brand visibility in key markets. Please turn to the next slide. Turning to our second pillar, channel development. This year, we have been concentrating on retail excellence, ensuring our global retail channel are more intentionally curated for luxury customer experiences. This has meant progressing on our plan to close, relocate and open new stores. Key actions for 2024-25 have been the optimization of the EMEA network while expanding our footprint across APEC and Americas, preparing for several planned store openings for 2025-26. In total, we reduced the number of monobrand stores by 41 net, with this network now compromising 346 stores globally at year-end, after 15 new store openings, 9 uplift, 7 relocations over the past year. We also continued the more selective approach towards multi-brand channels and reduced the number of multi-brand stores. With a strategic city focus, we are pleased to report strong performance in our Wind City concept with 30% sell-out growth total and 38% for Q4 alone. We have initiated the Wind City concept also in LA and Tokyo, and we roll out the concept to more cities in the future. We have also been able to enhance our store experience through refreshed visual merchandising, improved store design, and dedicated staff training across client touchpoints, ensuring a luxury service. Our main priority for these spaces is to create magical moments and experiences for our clients. Through new openings and uplifts, we elevate our branded network. The opening of our new flagship store in Milan in the prestigious retail avenue Corso Matteotti and the recent upgrade to our space in Harrods London are testament to this. We are crafting spaces with meticulous attention to detail, timeless craftsmanship and showcasing personalized services such as Atelier, ensuring that they are destinations that act as true expression of our brand and our values that will be a visit to joy. For us, product excellence and longevity is a consistent pursuit. To reflect these ambitions, a range of new product innovations were launched this year. The H100, our new flagship headphone with our highest quality sound to date, were our first on-the-go product built on our own proprietary software platform, Amadeus, showcasing our software expertise. This platform will be critical for our future product pipeline. we also launched bioplay 11 the next generation of the successful bioplay ex earphones biosound a1 third generation a reimagining of our award-winning bluetooth speaker and biosystem 3000 the third release with in our recreated classic series which gives iconic products a second life through restoration remanufacturing and reinterpretation A luxury bespoke offer, Atelier, was introduced, designed to cater clients looking for pieces more personalized and unique to them than ever before. Throughout this program, we give our clients the opportunity to create custom-made products in collaboration with our master artisans in Struer. clients can choose from over 500 000 possible combinations on materials and finishes and we can create completely one-off creations too we wanted this special experience for our clients to reflect our legacy of unmatched sound and personal expression We also continued our circularity journey, which is critical to our pursuit of luxury timeless technology, achieving cradle to cradle certifications for six products this year, including H100 and the Biosound Theatre, which was the first soundbar in the world to achieve this. These results take us up to a total of eight certified products. which we are very proud of and will continue to focus on as an integrated part of our approach to product design. Let's move to the next slide. Under our final pillar, we focused on powering growth through our strategic business partnerships and licensing. and in 2024-25 secured new important partnerships. Predominantly, our six year technology licensing partnership with TCL will be key for elevating the audio experiences in TCL's premium TV portfolio through our audio by Bang & Olufsen proposition. Considering TCS wide reach as one of the largest consumer electronic companies in the world, we consider this a very impactful long term partnership. And this is a positive indication of the scale and type of partnerships we could like would like to continue developing in the future. We also expanded the Harman Automotive partnership to the Hyundai Group, introducing Audio by Bangalosen in car proposition and are looking forward to combining Hyundai's tech forward vision with our expertise in digital audio. Overall, we have continued to focus on further developing our technology propositions to expand our offerings also to the hospitality industry. Please move to the next slide. Underpinning the four pillars that we just outlined is a commitment to making sure that all these products and experiences are developed and delivered responsibly, not only to make sure that what we are creating has a timeless longevity, but also to reduce our environmental impact. This year, our integrated annual reporting aligns to the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards for the first time. The overview of our achievements and path forward is comprehensive, so here we are delighted to also share selected highlights from our full year sustainability efforts. Firstly, for climate change, we continue to make tangible progress towards our climate commitments, which is anchored in our science-based targets and net zero by 2040 ambition. We made measurable improvements across operations, value chain collaborations and product innovation, which led us to achieve a reduction in our emission across scopes one, two and three. As part of this work, we achieved our 100% renewable electricity target a year ahead of schedule. Secondly, we advanced our circularity agenda with meaningful results across design, certification, innovation, and advocacy. This progress supports our ambition to lead the consumer electronics industry towards a more regenerative future, and it becomes an increasingly intuitive part of our work. Among other achievements during 24-25 financial year, we were particularly proud that six new products were cradle-to-cradle certified at bronze level, bringing our certified portfolio to eight products. And we expanded our recreated classic program with the launch of the recreated biosystem 3000 turntable, continuing the remanufacturing of iconic legacy products to extend their lifespan and reduce waste. Our overall goal is to create long-term environmental business value through the integration of circular design within all stages of our product development. Moving on to the next slide. Moving now from last year's success to looking ahead to an incredible milestone. On November 17th this year, Bang & Olufsen turns 100 years, and we will celebrate a century at the forefront of luxury audio. To honor this special milestone, we will run an extensive global campaign that will unveil a new look and feel of the brand and will spotlight our excellence in sound. We will curate brand experiences and continue to showcase our retail excellence while adding iconic pieces to our luxury product portfolio. We are filled with enthusiasm for the future. With globally resonant centenary campaign and the focus plan, we will elevate brand perception, grow awareness, and turn cultural impact into commercial value. With the foundation already in place, we are now scaling brand-led growth with a focus on meeting our audiences where they are based through our retail excellence initiatives, an elevated product offering, deeper customer relationships, and globally consistent storytelling. I will now hand over to Nicolai to take us through our outlook and financial results more in detail.

Thank you, Christian. Now, please move to page 15. Now, let me start by taking you through our Q4 performance in more detail. In Q4, our like-for-like seller grew by 7% compared to last year. Growth was seen across regions, and for branded channels, like-for-like seller grew by 8%. For wind cities, seller grew by 38%, with double-digit growth across all the four cities. Like-for-like sellout in EMEA grew by 5%. Branded channels generated sellout growth, supported by double-digit growth from our company-owned stores. Sellout in the Americas grew by 20%. The branded channels combined reported double-digit growth year-on-year across all product categories, while sellout in retail declined. Please note that the like-for-like sellout growth excludes the California stores, while they are included in the comparison figures on revenue growth. For the APAC region, like-for-like sellout grew by 6%, driven by double-digit growth of branded channels. In China, like-for-like sellout declined by 4%, sellout from the Moonbrand channel declined single-digit. Across regions, like-for-like sellout for the stage category grew by 2%, while flexible living declined by 2%, and the undergo category grew by 29%. This mainly reflected the change in channel mix towards our branded channels, as well as the performance of our three launchers in the undergo category. Please move to the next page. Reported revenue for the quarter was 680 million. This was an increase of 4% in local currencies compared to Q4 of last year. We are pleased to see that growth rates improved quarter by quarter throughout the year. The increase in reported revenue can be attributed to an increase in product sales of 9%, while brand partnering and other activities experienced a decline of 21% in local currencies. The development in product revenue was driven by reported growth of 14% in branded channels. The stage category grew by 3%, mainly driven by increased revenue from TVs and soundbars. Flexible living declined 3%. Last year, Beosound 2 had a strong performance due to the Ferrari collection, which was partly offset by higher sales of Beosound A5 and A9. The undergo category increased by 31%. Growth was mainly driven by the successful launch of H100, BOPlay 11 and A1 3rd generation. The decline to 82 million in brand partnering and other activities was mainly due to lower revenue from co-branded products and an expected fall in license income from HP, though partly offset by increased revenue from automotive. We continue the planned ramp-up of the TCL license partnership. Please turn to the next page. Now moving to revenue per region. Revenue from the EMEA region grew by 9% in local currencies, and growth was reported across all branded channels in the regions. Revenue grew across most of the European markets, although Germany saw a decline in revenue due to lower market momentum. The gross margin was up 1.3 percentage points to 50.9%. In the Americas, revenue grew by 3% in local currencies, driven by double-digit growth from company-owned stores and e-com. The growth level also reflects some partner hesitance in the U.S. The moon and brand channel declined due to a strong quarter in Q4 of last year and uncertainty related to tariffs, which is an area we are monitoring closely going into the new financial year. The gross margin decreased by 1.3 percentage points to 48.7%. Adjusting for tariff costs, the gross margin was overall flat in the Americas. Revenue in APAC was 182 million, which is an increase of 13% in local currencies. Revenue from our Chinese market grew by 7% in local currencies and accounted for approximately 46% of total revenue in APAC. In late April, we took over the online flagship store on the e-tail platform Tmall. Thus, we are now operating the two largest e-tail platforms in China directly, which we expect will improve the overall brand control and performance in the market. Overall for the APAC region, the gross margin grew to 54.7%, up 2.9 percentage points from Q4 last year. Please move to the next page. On group level, the gross margin rose to a record high of 55.8% and was up 1.5 percentage points compared to last year. The gross margin for product sales was 51.7% and increased from 50.2%, while the gross margin for brand partnering increased to 84.9% due to a higher share of licensed income. EBIT margin before special items was 1% compared to 1.8% in Q4 last year. Please turn to the next page. Moving on to capacity cost and net working capital. Capacity cost decreased by 5 million year-on-year. Looking at the composition of capacity cost, development cost increased by 12 million. The incurred development cost before capitalization ratio was 16.7% compared to 15.6% last year. Distribution and marketing costs decreased by 21 million and our marketing cost ratio was 8.7% compared to 10% last year. Administrative costs increased by 4 million during our employee bonus accrual at year end. Networking capital decreased by 39 million during the quarter to 216 million. Trade receivables increased by 79 million and payables increased by 132 million due to higher activity and timing of payments. The improved net working capital over the past two years is mainly due to a focus on branded channels and reduced inventory levels. Inventory increased by 34 million during the quarter to 447 million, which was in line with last year. Over the last three years, we have seen an inventory reduction of 182 million. Please move to the next page. Free cash flow for Q4 was 4 million and declined by 39 million compared to last year. The positive level was primarily due to timing of payments and collection efforts at year-end. CapEx was 86 million for Q4 and mainly related to intangible assets and investments in new products and platforms. The increased level was expected and going forward we expect further increases and with more retail-related capex in the mix. Capital resources amounted to 600 million at the end of Q4, of which available liquidity was 350 million. This was driven by the directed issue of net 217 million received in December 24 and the refinancing and increase of our revolving credit facility. Please turn to the next page. Before I present the outlook for 2025-2026, I would like to give a bit of detail on how we currently see traffic levels impacting our business. For the recent quarter, we saw an impact of around 3 million, which also equals the full year effect. For the year, revenue in the Americas was around 12% of total revenue. Our production spans globally with the majority of production in China and in Europe and a small share in other Asian countries. Looking at the America's revenue, we can estimate around one third of the sales from products produced in Europe and two thirds produced in China. We do not have any production in the US. We have assessed an approximate impact on an annual basis. We're looking into different scenarios depending on the outcome of the current tariff negotiations with deadline this week for Europe and next month for China. We have estimated a gross tariff cost impact of up to 40 million Danish kroner, which our outlook is based on. I have to stress that it is unknown territory that we are navigating in and any assessment would be subject to uncertainties. We have mitigated the estimated gross tariff cost through price increases implemented on 1 May and 1 June. In addition, our margin structures with our US dealers have been adjusted, but these mitigations are, however, very uncertain as the impact on demand is unknown. And in addition, the impact from tariffs on the global economy could be severe. If our estimation is correct, the net impact on our gross margin is negative with around 0.5 to 1.0 percentage points. We are also looking into further mitigating actions, such as looking at our supply chain and our production setup. Now please move to the next page. So moving to the outlook for the financial year 2025-26. The challenging macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties seem to persist and navigating ongoing change will remain a key priority for us. We will closely monitor the tariff changes and market developments in the coming period while staying focused on the next step of strategic acceleration. Overall, we are affected by a higher uncertainty than last year when we published the outlook for 2024-25. In particular, in terms of tariffs and the outlook for the US market in general, we are currently seeing some hesitance and concerns from our dealers. Despite uncertainty, we remain focused on the execution of our strategy. As we have previously mentioned, our mid-term plan includes an ambitious plan for store openings, uplift, relocations and closings in 2025-26, and we expect these initiatives to drive growth in especially the second half of the mid-term period. Within our outlook, we assume the launch of three or more products in the coming year. While being fewer than previous years, we believe that they will be key drivers of growth, mainly in the second half of the year. The outlook for 2025-2026 is as follows. Revenue growth is expected to be in the range of 1% to 8%. EBIT margin before special items is expected to range from minus 3% to plus 1%. And the free cash flow expected to be in the range of minus 100 million to zero. With the proceeds from the capital raise, we will continue the investment program of strategic execution. In addition to channel development, we will invest further in our product portfolio, our software development and increase marketing spend. This means that capex is expected to increase to around 320 to 360 million and capacity costs are expected to increase as well by around 150 million compared to 24-25. And before I hand back to Christian for closing remarks, let me also briefly update you that in the year ahead, we will be making a format change to our reporting for 2025-2026. We will move into a trading statement approach for Q1 and Q3, which will of course still be supported by our usual webcast. For the half-year and full-year results, our reporting will remain as today.