Gn Store Nord A/S Adr

Hello, everyone, and welcome to GN's conference call in relation to an annual report announced this morning. Participating in today's call is Group CEO Peter Karlstrammer, Group CFO Søren Gjelert, and myself, Rune Senner, Head of Investor Relations. The presentation is expected to last about 25 minutes, after which we'll turn to the Q&A session. The presentation is already uploaded on GN.com. And with that, I'm happy to hand over to Peter for some opening remarks.

Thank you, Rune, and thank you all for joining us today. In 2024, we demonstrated that we are on track to deliver on the intended results from our transformation into a simpler and more efficient one-company setup. We delivered strong, profitable growth resulting in a very healthy cash flow. We have strengthened our foundation to allow us to invest further in the business to ensure sustainable and profitable growth in order to reach our long-term targets. In 2024, we navigated in mixed market conditions resulting in different growth outcomes for our three divisions. But a broad cost focus and synergy realizations have resulted in improved margins in line with our 1GN strategy. In hearing, we continue to deliver very strong performance in a market that grew slightly below historical growth rates following a very strong market in 2023. In 2024, we managed to grow 10% organically, which was on top of the 13% organic growth we delivered in 2023. This was achieved by our highly successful Nexia hearing aid portfolio and our partner approach model. Our growth was broad-based across regions and channels. In addition, we managed to further improve margins driven by the strong execution of top line and cost control, as well as a positive influence from the 1GN transformation, while also investing in future technology leadership, which is exemplified by a recent announcement of recent Vivia, which I will get back to later. In enterprise, we have seen a stabilisation of the market throughout the year and will continue to remain optimistic about further market improvements into 2025. We have maintained our market-leading position in headsets and gained market shares in video, and even though the market didn't perform and improve at the level we anticipated in the beginning of 2024, we have managed to improve the margin profile driven by a strong pricing discipline and our 1GN transformation. In gaming, we had a very strong finish to the year and gained market share in a slightly growing gaming market. SteelSeries was back at double-digit growth in Q4, underlying a strong innovation and robustness of our business. In fact, Q4 was the strongest quarter ever for SteelSeries, even surpassing the high COVID levels. The gaming division has also benefited from the 1GN transformation, already improving the margin profile and setting the division up for further margin improvements in the years to come. We ended the year successfully concluding the wind down of the Elite and Torque product lines and can now in this division fully focus on growing our gaming business while continuing improving our profitability. On a group level, we have also taken big steps in improving the margin profile. The 1GN transformation has developed favorably during its first year. We have delivered a total company-wide synergies of around 430 million Danish kroner, slightly ahead of our original plan. During the year we have implemented changes to ensure a flexible and resilient global supply chain. We have also further integrated our research and development teams to utilize scale, talent, processes and facilities to accelerate our innovation. On the finance side, we have streamlined operations and established a shared service center in Poland. We have done this while also building a stronger culture, defining new leadership principles and significantly improving the ESG agenda, including helping more than 11 million people with hearing loss around the world and reducing our scope free carbon emissions by slightly more than 25% compared to 21%. In summary, we are very pleased with our execution and progress during the year. We have created a stronger GM and prepared for future sustainable growth in order to deliver more long-term financial targets, which were announced at our capital market days in May. With this introduction, I'm happy to hand it over to CERN for further details on the group performance for the year.

Thank you, Peter, and thank you all for joining us today. Essentially, as Peter mentioned earlier, we feel good about the progress we have made in 2024 and the financial we are delivering on our commitments. In summary, we delivered 1% organic growth for the year, supported by 10% organic growth from our hearing division and negative 3% organic growth from our enterprise division and a 7% organic growth from our gaming division and lastly a negative 31% organic growth from our consumer wind down due to the wind down. If we exclude the wind down effect, organic revenue growth for the group would have been 4%. Our improvement in gross margin, supported by the strong cost focus and company-wide synergies, led to a 79% increase in reported EBITDA, which translates into an EBITDA margin of 12%, 5.4 percentage points higher than last year. The increased profitability also influenced the free cash flow generation positively, where we ended the year with 1.1 billion DKK in free cash flow, excluding M&A, and reduced our leverage further. Moving to the financial details on slide 6. As previously noted, our three divisions executed strongly, generated a 4% organic revenue growth, excluding the wind down, and a 1% in reported organic growth. Despite the mixed development on top line across our divisions, as well as the wind down of consumer and retail disposals, the gross margin increased to 53.2% compared to 49.4% in 2023. This was driven by our strong pricing discipline, synergy realizations and positive business mix. As for the company transformation initiatives, we realized synergies of around 430 million during 2024, which was slightly ahead of the plan for the year. Reported EBITDA grew 79% equal to an EBITDA margin of 12.0% compared to a 6.6% in 2023. The strong improvement in margin reflects the gross margin improvement across our divisions, but also company-wide OPEX benefits from the 1GN transformation and less extraordinary costs. With that, let's move to slide 7 and more details on the free cash flow generation. Our solid earnings level led to a positive cash flow generation of 1.1 billion Danish kroner. The strong cash flow generation was driven by the solid operational cash flow while the impact from working capital was slightly positive. 2024 included a small tailwind from changes in the working capital, which was predominantly a result of the slightly higher payables, as the positive effect on inventories was offset by a very strong revenue finish to the year, driving up receivables. With a solid cash flow generation, we have been able to reduce our net interest-bearing debt. And with the improving margin profile, our adjusted leverage ended at 3.5 times compared to 4.5 times last year, another important step in our deleveraging plan. And with those group highlights, I'm happy to hand you over to Peter from Additional Caller on the three divisions.

Thank you, Søren. Let me start with the hearing division. In 2024, we continued to drive market share gains thanks to the success of Resound Nexia. As a result of our strong execution, we grew organically by 10% on top of a very demanding comparison from 2023, where we grew 13%. The growth was broad-based across regions and channels. The gross margin of 62.8% reflects a strong increase from last year, despite the retail disposals, including Bella del Cau and Dansk Høres Center. This was driven by continuous success of Resound Nexia and group synergies. Sales and marketing costs decreased slightly compared to last year, supported mainly by retail disposals. As a result of our strong topline development and prudent cost management, we delivered a divisional profit margin of 34.7%, which was an improvement of 7.1% compared to last year. For our core hearing business, we are also happy to confirm that we delivered an EBITDA margin of 20%, showcasing the success of our partner approach model and the 1GN strategy. Our OTC business, JabraEnhance.com, delivered a very strong WD growth for the year. We are satisfied with this development and remain committed to break even with this business late 2025 to early 2026. Let's move to slide 10 for some exciting news within HEARING. This week, we proudly announce our next hearing aid platform, Resound Vivia. With this new platform, we're inducing a revolution within signal processing with the help of AI. This is a change of the same magnitude as when we went from analog to digital hearing aids decades ago. With Vivia, we bring hearing aid wearers a human approach to AI using the world's most efficient AI algorithm on a dedicated DNN chip. that is trained to real spoken sentences to bring a real difference to the wearer. The development has been built on decades of shared AI and machine learning research across the GN group, which will influence our total company over time. Most importantly, the benefits for the wearer are tangible. By combining DNN with our core processor that gives you the most narrow and precise beamformer, we can offer the world's best hearing in noisy environments. We achieve this while preserving cues in the environment so you can focus on what's most important to you and not feel as if you've cut out of the world around you. This breakthrough technology is packed in the world's smallest rechargeable receiver and ear hearing aid. It's the same size and the reason Nexia. On top of that, Reason Vivia hearing aid wearer will experience a full day of battery without any compromise, even with streaming or having AI active, so you can keep on hearing in an uncompromised way. And finally, Reason Vivia naturally connects to Bluetooth Low Energy and AuraCast. And with our new AuraCast assistant, we enable everyone to enjoy and connect to AuraCast, even if the mobile device is not compatible yet. we're really taking the lead on the next era of connectivity. In short, with Resound Vivia, you can have it all. It does not stop there, though. We have also this week launched the recent SAVI platform, our new essential hearing aid that is important to our business in many geographies around the world. We are bringing Bluetooth Low Energy and AuraCast broadcast audio into SAVI, ensuring that even more people with hearing loss can experience the latest in connectivity and innovation. With the exciting launch of ReasonVivia and ReasonSavvy, let's move to slide 11 and share some expected perspectives on 25. As visualized by the graph to the left, We are exposed to an attractive and resilient hearing aid market. We continue to believe in a 46% annual volume growth in line with history, driven by favourable demographic trends and an increased adoption by a globally growing middle class. With some minor ASP erosion, this translates into an annual value growth of 3-5%, which is also a base assumption for 2025. During 2024, we have seen a broad-based success across all three regions and across all channels, which has enabled a further growth of global share. We look forward to continue a strong momentum with the launch of Reason Vivia and Reason Savi and aspire to gain further market share across our regions in 2025. Let's move to the next slide and also share some highlights on the performance on enterprise. The enterprise division successfully maintained its market-leading position in a gradually improving market. The division realized a negative 3% organic revenue growth for the year, while the organic revenue growth in Q4 was negative 2%, confirming an improving trend. Despite the negative top-line development, gross margin improved to 55.7% compared to 52.3% last year, primarily driven by strong pricing discipline and group synergies. Our sales and distribution costs were approximately flat, reflecting targeted channel investment to benefit from an improving market, while also controlling cost well in other areas. The visual and profit margin ended at 35.3%, which is an improvement of 2.6% at this point compared to last year, driven by gross margin improvements and a stable development of sales and distribution costs. Moving to the next slide. As mentioned in our Q3 presentation, we have seen different development with our different product categories. In Q4, we saw a continuation of the market improvements we have seen throughout the year. The headset business continued to gradually strengthen. In video, we experienced continued double-digit growth, while our speaker phones declined significantly. However, to somewhat lesser extent in Q4 than the prior quarters. In summary, for 2024, we had a negative 3% growth in enterprise, primarily driven by the speakerphone category, which experienced a weak market and difficult comparisons last year. Let's move to slide 14 and talk about 2025. The headset market has now experienced three consecutive years of decline after the rapid growth during the COVID pandemic. More positively, we believe that we're coming to the end of this adjustment period. Recent indications suggest increasing IT budget levels and improving sentiment across distributor, resellers, and end customers. Also, if we look on Q4, we saw a growth in terms of our sellout from the channel in both North America and the rest of the world, and also several parts in Europe. There are some remaining markets in Europe, in particular in Central Europe, with negative growth. In total, with these forces in play, we expect a modestly growing market in 2025. Also, our R&D teams are focusing to bring a lot of new innovation into enterprise. This week, we launched Panacast 40 VBS, which is built on the GM Group's unique sound and video processing capabilities. And this is the first 180 degree field of view Android powered video bar designed for small rooms. With innovation, we're essentially bringing many of the same benefits from the Panacast 50 into more compact and cost-effective solution that will help companies bring video into every meeting room. This is in line with our strategy to gradually broaden our portfolio to cover every room type and also both premium and entry-level offerings. Early in the year, we also announced the launch of Jabra Perform 75, a new headset that is purpose-built for retail workers and future-ready for AI-supported voice-led applications. We have during the last 18 months also upgraded our industry-leading headset portfolio to meet the new legislative standards around USB-C and battery replacement. While we have done this, we have also taken initiatives to strengthen the performance of several products. As an example, we recently upgraded our Speak2s to also enable now linking several devices together to have an even more flexible solution. In parallel with this, we're also working on new headset innovation to knowledge workers. And we very much look forward to gradually bringing this into the market starting towards the end of this year. And with that, let's take a closer look also on the gaming and consumer division. In our gaming and consumer division, we delivered organic revenue growth of negative 5% compared to last year, driven by the wind-down of our Elite and Torque product lines. Our gaming business grew organically with 7%, reflecting market share gains in a slightly growing market. The performance in Q4 was especially strong, delivering 16% organic revenue growth on top of 70% last year. Our consumer business declined 31% organically, purely driven by the wind-down of the Elite and Talk portfolio, which is now completed according to our plan. Our gross margin for the division increased 5% to 29.8% despite significant promotional activities related to wind-down and extraordinary cost. The underlying improvement is reflected in the strong top-line performance in gaming, group synergies and strong pricing discipline. Sales and distribution cost grew 22% reflecting extraordinary cost related to wind-down but also channel investment and marketing activity to support continued market share gains in gaming. Altogether, the divisional profit margin ended at 5.4% for the year, which reflects the negative effect from the wind-down, moving to slide 16 and some flavor on 25. The gaming market is structurally attractive and influenced by a continuing increase in the number of gamers around the world and the time they are spending gaming. For the benefit of SteelSeries' premium product portfolio, there is a growing appetite for premium features supporting high ASP levels. While we project a healthier market around 3.5% in 2025, this is also including some headwind from the current situation around consumer sentiment in parts of Europe. Even though steel shares have gained significant market shares for several years, we do believe we can continue to drive even higher share in 2025 based on our winning strategy and strong portfolio. We will continue to help gamers win by providing industry-leading products tailored to the gamers' needs. In addition, we will continue to develop our software services to enhance the gaming experience even further. Our software adoption is growing rapidly and is supporting the growth of SteelSeries in a healthy way. In summary, SteelSeries was created by gamers for gamers and we very much look forward to continue to develop the business in that way. Our long history of close collaborations with professional esports teams, tournaments and streaming providers gives us a unique position to further grow our business into the future with the aim to help gamers win around the world. In 2024, we also took the step to strengthen the SteelSeries operations and supply chain by integrating it into the same system and product flow as the enterprise business. While some modern improvements were seen during the year, we expect further improvements in the division as we fully utilize the scale of GN. And with that, I'm happy to hand it back to Søren for the financial guidance.

Thank you, Peter. For 2025, we expect an organic revenue growth excluding the wind down of 3% to 7% driven by continued strong execution across our three divisions. Moreover, we are guiding for a reported EBITDA margin of 12% to 14%. The solid absolute earnings level is expected to contribute to healthy cash flow levels while we are guiding for free cash flow excluding M&A around 800 million DKK. All in all, the financial guidance supports our sustainable and profitable growth journey and additional steps in the 1GN transformation that eventually will lead to realization of our long-term targets. This guidance is based on a number of assumptions across markets and own execution, which Peter briefly touched upon earlier. This leads me to slide 19. For the hearing aid market, we expect the market growth for 2025 to be in line with historic growth rates with a global volume growth of 4-6% and a slightly negative ASP development. In this healthy market, we are assuming that we can continue to gain market share driven by our relevant and recently updated product offerings and channel execution, while we are assuming an organic revenue growth of 5-9%. For the enterprise market, we believe that the continued stabilization we have seen during the past year will materialize into a modest market growth in 2025. We continue to see some indications of increased IT budget spend for the year as well as an improving sentiment from our distributors, resellers and end customers. In addition, we observe growth in North America, rest of the world and parts of Europe during Q4. In this market, we assume that we can continue to maintain our leading global market share position in headsets, while expanding our market share in video collaboration. As a result, we are assuming an organic revenue growth of 0-4%. For gaming, we expect the market growth for 25 to be slightly below its structural assumed market growth and hence project the market to grow 3-5%. In this market, we are assuming continued market share gains in gaming driven by our current momentum and strong product roadmap that translate into an organic revenue growth assumption of 7-12%. However, it is important to stress that this assumption excludes a negative impact from the wind-down. In reality, the reported organic revenue growth of gaming would likely then be 19-20% lower, as the 24 base includes the Elite and Torque product lines. All in all, Applying these assumptions leads to a guidance on group organic revenue growth excluding the wind down of 3-7%. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, we do not assume that the elite and torque product lines will contribute to any significant revenue, while the negative impact of the wind down is assumed to be 3-4 percentage points compared to the realized levels of 24. Moving to slide 20 and the margin guidance. First and foremost, it's encouraging to see that our strong attention to margin expansion is evident in the 24 numbers. In 24, we took a significant step forward by delivering an EBITDA margin of 12%. This is exactly the plan we put forward at our Capital Market Day back in May of 24. At that time, we mentioned that there were planning for a significant margin expansion in 24. But from here, a more evenly distributed margin expansion towards 2028. Despite investments and external headwinds, we do expect further margin expansion in 2025, and the investments we are now executing should support our long-term margin aspiration. Specifically in 2025, we will experience a margin tailwind from the additional 1G and synergies that comes on top of the 430 million realized in 2024. Moreover, we will naturally see a margin tailwind from the non-recurring nature of 202 million extraordinary wind-down costs incurred in 2024. Finally, we will continue to focus on increasing underlying profitability levels in general, driven by leverage, but where the size will be correlated with the top line. However, the guidance does also include a negative impact from certain costs directly linked to the wind down for the service and warranty commitments. These are expected to diminish over the next couple of years, and you should assume headwinds of around 50 million DKK. To solidify the margin path towards 2028, we will in 2025 invest further into operations including supply chain IT modernization, ERP optimization and cybersecurity to ensure a sustainable and resilient growth platform. This will allow us to drive the targeted margin expansion way further, creating flexibility and resilience against current and potential further geopolitical challenges. The recently announced tariffs between China and the US is expected to lead to a slight negative margin impact for the group in the area of 0.5 percentage points mainly in gaming and to some extent in enterprise, while no impact is assumed in hearing. While it is impossible for us to predict the outcome of the geopolitical challenges, we are taking into account what we know today. However, with the tariffs we are aware of today, these will be temporary for GN as we continue our manufacturing diversification. Finally, assuming current FX rates prevail through 2025, we will also be negatively impacted by the recent development, not least by the appreciated USD. This will be a tailwind to revenue, but a headwind to the reported EBITDA margin, as the majority of the negative FX impact in absolute EBITDA is hedged. All in all, this is likely a headwind in the magnitude of up to 0.5 percentage points on the EBITDA margin. And with that, I'm happy to hand you back to Rune.

Thank you, Peter and Søren, for the updates. And with that, I'll hand over to the operator for the Q&A. Please limit your questions to two at a time.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from the line of Angela Bozinovich with BNPPXN. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Two from my side. Just first one on the guidance. Can you please help us to put into perspective the 12% to 14% e-visa guide? What are your assumptions back in the top end and the lower end? And as a follow-up, what do you have in the lower end in terms of tariff, competition in hearing, and recovery in audio assumptions? And the second one on hearing on Resound Vivian, congrats on launching the new platform. Can you give us any details on the phasing of launch, especially in key geographies and channels? And as a follow-up, if you can confirm, you aim to launch in the VA in May. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for your questions. In terms of the guidance on the EBITDA margin of 12% to 14%, for us, of course, it's important, as we stated here in the in initial comments that we are seeing an improvement in GN on the margin that is well aligned with the trajectory for us on our long-term EBITDA margin of 16 to 17%. We are expecting the midpoint to be the best estimate between the 12th and the 14th as that's normally good practice. And here we have taken into consideration, as we say, the FX and the tariff. And then especially what then will be improving it will be further, of course, driving to the high end of the top line, which will yield an improvement for us, and equivalent, of course, the lower end being the lower end of the revenue side. That remains still to be the two most predominantly drivers of this spread for us. Rest assured that we in management, of course, all the time also are working on our synergies. And of course, some of that is then also to the upside if that comes out well. So I think overall, we look at it as a very balanced outlook and as an anchor in the middle between the 12 and the 14.

And let me continue with a question here on Vibia. Essentially, we plan to roll out Vibia following the same rollout approach as we've been having for next year. So how that will play out is that starting a few weeks into February, we will start to put Vibia into parts of the US channels and also slightly thereafter into the larger markets in Europe, starting with Germany. and then you should expect that into q2 we will we will put it into a lot i mean the full us business as much as we can and then also gradually roll it out market by market where we prioritize larger markets and also some kind of approval process for every market determining how we will face it And then lastly, VA, it's absolutely our intention to have VIVIA in VA. As you probably know, there is an ongoing negotiation process here with VA, but we believe confident that we should be able to succeed with this and then launch in May there, as you suggest.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from a line of Hassanal Waqil with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. A couple from me. So just on tariffs, what is the timeline to shift manufacturing for both gaming and enterprise? And do you expect this to be completed this year? And how are you thinking about the potential for any European tariffs? Secondly, on margins, appreciate around 100 bps of headwind from tariff and FX to the margin for 2025. But the margin guidance is still softer than we thought. Can you elaborate on the margin building blocks and quantify the investments planned for 2025 and what you deem to be the drivers of any potential upside to the top of the range? Thank you.

Okay, thank you. So when it comes to the tariffs, taking a step back, I mean, we have taken quite some initiatives already to diversifying our global operations and supply chain, and essentially going from a relatively China-centric manufacturing footprint to have a much more diversified. And there we are already today. So when we're saying that we see some effect on enterprise and and a bit more effect on gaming that reflect exactly how we set up today. We will of course take every step we can to further diversify and this is actually something we will do regardless of these tariffs. We're really trying to set us up to have all the flexibility we can to cater for different scenarios here. So when we say 0.5% impact, that already takes some mitigation in place, and these initiatives we will continue with, so I cannot give you a precise estimate, but you should assume that over time we can work ourselves out of any type of impact like that. and then to your question in europe we do not have any significant manufacturing in europe so we we don't do not feel exposed in that way uh with that said we of course need to understand exactly uh what what kind of policy that might be implemented but our assessment is that that's a limited risk for us

And then again, of course, similar a little bit to the answer before on the guidance on the EBITDA margin. We think we have a pretty firm midpoint of our guidance between the 12 and the 14%. And for us, of course, we are extremely proud about the launches we've just done in hearing and also with the video bars. And it is, of course, clear that that modernization of our portfolio, in our mind, at least can also lead to an improvement on on our profitability on the upwards ranging trend. So that is what will support us. Then when it comes to the negative, it is truly also so that a little bit depending on how the mix pans out, as you know, we have a different profitability levels across our businesses and that of course it can be sensitive to on the lower levels and then finally we have said in here what we know on tariff today and on currency today and of course that can also fluctuate and give a range on how it impacts us but overall with what we know today on tariffs we think we have the right plan and it's a plan we have communicated on for quite some time so we feel good about that and then finally I think It is really important to remind all of us that the path we have now shown in 24, with a good uplift on profitability, with further improvement here in 25, that is a clear indication that points towards the right trajectory towards the 16 to 17% EBITDA margin for the group. So for us, this is definitely a step in the right direction with the 25 outlook we have.

Thanks a lot.

The next question comes from the line of Martin Parkoy with SEB. Please go ahead.

Yes, Martin Parker from SEB. Two questions, both related to growing eggs. Maybe, Peter, you could speak a little bit to the 5% to 9% you are guiding for 2025. Are there any, you know, channels or regions you believe are sticking out? And maybe you can make a specific comment on Beltone. How is that doing? Is that also growing within that range? And then, secondly, on ReSound Vivia, where you gave a quite impressive speech about the benefits of Vivia. And I was a little bit curious about, because I've gone through the white paper and read how you have tested the product up against other AI-powered hearing aids, particularly for them from Switzerland. And I can see that you have done it in a pretty mild, noisy environment, and everybody knows that their products are doing very well in a very noisy environment. Have you also tested it in other noisy environments than this very mild environment?

Thank you, Martin. So, starting with the guidance here, I mean, we are giving a range here, and you should take the midpoint here as the most likely, and we are guiding here to grow faster than the market, thanks to both good momentum, but also our belief in Vivia. When we look at how we will build up the year, I think it's fair to assume that Q1 will be a little bit slower growth, and then as we're rolling out Vivia, the growth will be built up throughout the year. I think it's also fair to assume that you will see more growth in the US in the earlier parts here, as you did with Nexia. and then that to be picked up around the world as we're launching into the other market. I think it's interesting to see actually how we performed this last year, where it really played out like that. I mean, the first half was very strong in the US and second half, I mean, really the rest of the world picked that up and we're actually growing the strongest towards the second half. And I think we will see a similar dynamic here, but altogether we do not see any specific challenges per se. I mean, every channel is behaving slightly differently, but it helps with a really great hearing aid and we will work to drive success abroad-based. I mean, on Beltone, without going too deep into individual channel types, I think it's been falling a bit the same. We've been having a period of very strong growth with Beltone and then more modest growth. Certainly, the launch now of Vivia will support growth also in the Beltone network. That's how we think about it. Then when it comes to Vivia, in terms of the studies, we have published them as well as we can. You can always have an argument on exactly how you test, and it is a difficult science, but we have really tried to test it in natural environments to mimic how people spend their life and where our users are using the hearing aids. And we have done that to really make sure we develop a strong hearing aid. And the outcome of this is something we're really proud of and very much believe in. And we do think it will really help anywhere in a great way. So we do feel confident about the benefits we bring into the market here.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Martin Breno with Nordea. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you very much for taking my questions, Søren and Peter. I have two questions, and I'll direct them over to Enterprise instead for a moment. The first question would be on the exit run rate in Enterprise. Can you maybe give us a little bit of color on how that looked like? Because when we were in November, You were talking about sell-out rates around minus 3%, and now the quarter ended around minus 2%. Does that mean that you had a quite strong December, and has that continued into the beginning of the new year? That's the first question. And then on the second question, I'm sorry, but analysts always want more. Now you have two questions. product launches that you need to cater, but you have also alerted earlier to a headset launch, which is the biggest category. How does the product launch roadmap look like in enterprise from here? That's the second question. Thank you.

Thanks a lot. Now, starting here, I mean, in Q3, we saw some improvements, and I would say we have seen a continuation of that. So, as I highlighted in the opening here, I mean, if you look on sell-out from the channel, which tend to be the most robust way of viewing the market and also very much a leading indicator for future growth, I mean, we saw growth in a healthy way in the US, in APAC and rest of the world, and actually even parts of Europe. Specifically in the quarter, I mean, our selling and sellout in aggregate were fairly balanced in the quarter. So I think as such, I think we're entering the year in a balanced way with some improving trends. And I think it's fair to assume that whatever we know about January, we are factoring into our guidance as well. With all that said, I do think as you are thinking about growth in enterprise for the year, do expect growth to be built up during the year. And in the same way, it's been gradually strengthened. We think that will continue. So it will likely be a bit stronger performance throughout the year. And also a bit linked to this about product launches. We do expect to launch a new innovation into the headset category more towards the end of the year. And that's something we look forward to. We have already made some more optimization, you can say, of the portfolio to make it ready for legislation like battery replacement, USB-C and others. And we have actually upgraded the performance of several products, which we are not making big announcements around, but it's certainly something our customers, knowing our products, really appreciate. but more new innovation around the headset is more towards the end of the year. And it will be a gradual introduction. We have a broad portfolio, as you say, so we will gradually work them to refresh the portfolio, but some initial announcements towards the end of the year.

Makes a ton of sense. Just a quick follow-up to your build-up comment. Should we expect enterprise to start below the guidance and then build up, or do you think that you could start within your guidance range?

We like to avoid to guide on an individual quarter, but in some way, I think I'm repeating what I said, do expect the numbers to grow stronger throughout the year. And if you take the aggregate of the year, the midpoint of the 0-4 is really what we believe is the most likely outcome for the full year.

Makes sense, and congrats with the quarter here.

Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Maya Stefani-Pataki with Kepler-Sévret. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. This is Maya. One question for hearing, one question on the enterprise side, please. I'll start with hearing. With Vivia coming and, you know, the extension of Eliorcast into Savi, I was wondering what kind of technology are you bringing to your Jabra portfolio? If you're not bringing it now to the Jabra portfolio, when are you thinking to bring maybe LE Audio to the Jabra portfolio? That would be number one. And then number two on the U.S. I mean, the last two, three weeks were quite entertaining or adventurous with regards to different offices being shut down, companies calling people back to work and stuff like that. Is there anything that you believe that you're watching and saying like, you know, we have to monitor that because there might be disruption in the market for the enterprise side?

Thank you. if we look first on the portfolio here uh as you say vivian savvy here we're bringing we think great technology into the market but both in terms of the more upper end in a leading way but also for service something which can really benefit the full volume of our business As for the Jabra portfolio, I assume you refer to the Jabra we have under the OTC. We are not giving any specific details on the products here, exactly what we do, but you should assume that we're sharing technology between our portfolios, so for sure it will benefit from the same innovation also there. Exactly how we do that, we need to come back to the market around. And then the question related to enterprise. We believe that there's been, of course, a very strong debate for a longer period of time how we should work, and it's changing. I think it's the way we are thinking about it. Today, the statistics show that around 80% of all meeting minutes are made either fully virtual or in a hybrid way. And even if people coming back to office, it normally does not mean that everyone is sitting in the same office. And also, when people come back into offices, still the modern office tend to have very open landscapes where people work without private rooms. And as such, I think it's really beneficial to have good equipment, good headset, other good collaboration equipment. to be able to do that, to make sure that you're heard well, but also to make sure you can get the piece at work and focus in the right way. So we are not worried per se that it will change the demand for our type of products, but we're monitoring carefully these type of trends to understand what type of solution we like to develop and lead around to really give the solutions that workers and companies need.

Great, thank you very much. The next question comes from the line of Yang Nguyen with City. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my question. Two, please. The first one is on Vivia. Can you please provide some commentary around the pricing premium that you're expecting to realize at Vivia, considering that this comes with a dedicated AI chip and you already have another peer in the market sort of coming out there with a very big premium? And how about Rebound Savvy? How do you think about pricing for this product? And the second question is also on Vivia. It's more generally, what makes you decide to pursue a dual product launch this time?

Thank you. Thank you. When it comes to Vivia, we are always trying to have an opportunity to increase prices a bit when we're launching new products. And as such, we will certainly take the opportunity here also with Vivia. We're bringing new strong innovation to the market and We will do our very best to see how we can get the premium for that. I would say, though, that if we look on the cost structure of Vivia, it is a bit more than Nexia, but it's still a very cost-efficient platform. So the dedicated AI chip we have, I mean, it's adding some cost, but not in a way that it's completely changing the pricing strategy or anything like that. So we do think that we can operate with a great performing device that still we can produce at reasonable cost levels. So you should not expect a huge step up or the need to have a huge step up to maintain our margin levels, which we feel very good about. Actually, most of the innovation in Vivia is more on the algorithm. I mean, the ship per se is of course needed. There is a dedicated AI ship, but I think the revolution is really how we do the algorithm operates on that ship in a very kind of efficient way with great benefits. So we feel good about that and we'll do our best to both drive healthy growth, but also to a healthy profitability. and then when it comes to savvy we have not communicated exactly how we will price this but but but also here i mean if we more take it from a cost structure point of view it is also devised with with a good good cost structure so we have the pricing flexibility and we will really price that in a way so so we get the balance between growth and profitability around the world basically

Thank you. And sorry, if you can also answer to the last part of my question, what makes you decide to go down the route of having a dual platform launch this time?

Yes, why we launched both at the same time. I think essentially because we felt it was possible. I mean, we have worked on both and are coming together at a similar point in time. And we saw benefits here also from a communication point of view, interaction with audiologists. So I think we're doing this because we think it's the best approach for us to really bring it to market and really get all our channels and partners ready to support the devices.

Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Julian Quadur with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. So, I have two. The first one for enterprise. Can you maybe comment about the competitive dynamic for headsets specifically? I think you mentioned a sort of your maintained market leading position, but you didn't mention share gains in this specific category. And the question here is more, we're seeing good traction at Logitech, including in headset enterprise. So I was just wondering if you also saw that at your level. So any comment would be helpful. The second one is on hearing. Around recent VIVIA, could you maybe come back on the technical specificities of the dedicated DNN chip? How was it designed? Quantify maybe decibel gains in the most noisy environments. And, like, also how the DNN works. Is it automatic on some of the beamformer? And, I mean, how can we compare it versus your peers? Thank you.

Thank you so much. Starting with enterprise... What we have seen, which I made in the opening, is that, in particular, the US has been picking up quite nicely, so it's really good to see. APAC and the rest of the world as well, and EMEA a little bit less so. we we do believe that logitech also talk to the the improving sentiment in the market when you're trying to assess the growth and performance of us with the others i think it's helpful to both look on the geographical differences of our businesses and also a little bit the type of products we have so we We are having a bit higher market share in EMEA, and I believe Logitech are a bit stronger in the US. So I think that explains perhaps some differences in shorter-term performance trends. And then also we are focusing a bit more on the premium end on the market. There is where we are strongest. Some of the differences in performance in a specific quarter can be related to that. But I think we broadly observe the same trends. And when it comes to our own market shares, we are managing those for the majority of the countries where we operate. And we have seen stability over the year. And actually, if you take that in aggregate, I've seen some small gains during 24. But it's something we, of course, monitoring very carefully to make sure we are keeping it that way. And then if I'm moving more to your questions on Vivya, I mean, we have essentially in the launch shared all the technical details which we are able to, and also where we have studies and so. But we can confirm that Vivya, it has a dedicated DNN chip. And it is a relatively small ship, of course, because it's fitting into the same housing as Nexia. This has actually been something that we planned already when we did the housing for Nexia. And then I think that the most important thing here is that the ship is powerful. and powerful enough to cater for the algorithms we have that we think are very efficient. Because we've been very much putting attention to that we like to have the improvement in noise, but we also need to have efficient algorithms that don't need too much processing power, because too much processing power consumes too much power, and it would lead to difficulties with better usage and the size of devices. Our engineering teams have really tried here to find the optimal way of doing this, and we believe that we succeeded very well with what we have launched now this week.

Perfect. Thanks. If I can just follow up on your last comment about the, let's say, processing power. I mean, should we also maybe think that higher processing power can be, I mean, can help just to, I mean, like to use the, like the DNN real time, like a bit, like something similar to what your Swiss computers is doing and that you basically took the decision of being like probably closer to what Starkey or Demant are doing? Is it the right way to look at it? Because the difference in processing power seems to be pretty big between the chip in your Swisscom service. So that's why I'm asking.

We would absolutely not see what we are doing inferior to any product on the market. It is really there to compete with the best devices, including what Sonova has launched, so we don't see this being any inferior kind of helping in hearing a noisy environment. We've probably taken some different decisions, and what we believe is important, what we really believe is beneficial for the end users. But this is really real AI, real machine learning. It's trained on more than 13 million spoken sentences. And it's really performing in a great way. But it's also performing in an efficient way. And we actually think that's something really good. Because that is what allows it to be using less power and also allowing the form factor to be compelling. So we really believe we have done something great here and are proud to bring this to the market.

Perfect. Thanks. If I may, maybe squeezing a last one very quickly on the category. I know also your computer is trying to push for the creation of a new category, which would be more AI-driven. You took the approach like them having a dual chipset. I mean, first of all, do you believe in the creation of that? And would you maybe push for the specification of this category to be a dual chipset, including one dedicated to AI? I mean, what's your view on that?

No, I don't have any strong view I can share here today. But I think it's an interesting, of course, observation. It is a new shift in the market. We're really going to a new capability here to process sound in new ways. So firmly support that. Exactly how this will play out in our pricing approach. And so we probably need to let that give it some time.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from the line of David Adlington with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Yeah, morning, guys. Thanks for the question. Firstly, just on G&A expenses, which were quite a lot higher in the fourth quarter than I think most of you expected, just wondering if there's anything funny going on in there and how we should be thinking about that line through this year. And then just on hearing, just wondered if you'd undertaken any destocking in hearing in the fourth quarter ahead of the new launch. Thanks.

David, thank you. On the GNA, in our minds, actually, if you look at the year-on-year comparison and you take out the one-offs that we had in GNA in 23, we have seen a decline in GNA. Then what you can also see is that there is for us a tendency to have a Q4 DNA that is somewhat higher than the other quarters. So in that sense, it doesn't stick out. And of course, you should then not use the Q4 as this is the basis for multiplying by four over the quarters. You should anticipate also that the pattern we have seen previously is going to repeat itself. And as such, we do not see it as a as a dramatic change compared to what we've seen historically. But of course, I would agree with you that it's higher than it was in quarter three. So I think well spotted. But for us, it's not extraordinary.

I can continue with comments on the destocking. No, I would not say so. The introduction of Vivia here, as I laid out a bit earlier, will be as fast as we can, but still a gradual rollout. We are ramping up volumes, and as such, we still need Nexia to be in the market in significant volumes for a period of time. And they will coexist, and it will be a gradual shift between the two. Nothing dramatic in any way to take notice of here.

Thank you. And maybe just coming back on the G&A comment, I mean, any sort of particular guidance whether we should be up or down, sideways for G&A costs in 2025?

I think, no, we are not guiding on individual line items here. I think we overall have said that in the strategy context, going to this 16 to 17%, we expect over time to be more efficient than we are today, but probably have a shift within the G&A from admin into IT to support the growth platforms that we are having and the security platforms we are having. So that's how you should read into that. We're not guiding specifics for DNA for the year. Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Carson Longborg Madsen with Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

excellent thank you very much I have two questions one on Vivia Peter now you're talking a lot about this algorithm you have developed is it possible that you can share some information about how active is it so for example if you take throughout the day will it be turned on the entire day only when a noisy situation is detected or how does it actually work it is impressive to have this in such a small hearing aid I'll say so some color on how it's actually working would be nice. And then secondly, in relation to the OTC category, JabraEnhanced.com, a core hearing on how we want to break things down. What's your view on the OTC category these days? How big a share of the U.S. market or the market in general has the OTC category taken? And what's your position right now on JabraEnhanced.com? Will you continue to invest in expanding that channel at the same level? Or how should we see it going into 2025? And final question is, Søren, when you discuss the IT, ERP, cybersecurity investments, is that something we'll see in the P&L or is it more of a CapEx and activation on balance sheet thing?

Okay. Thanks a lot, Karsten. Let me start here. As for Vivia, the way it works with the AI chip and turning that on is that it's a bit like a hearing mode. So you actually turn it on yourself. And we believe that It's good to allow the user to have the full control of how they leverage the hearing aid in a similar way as we're doing it today. But it is very power efficient, so you can have it on for longer periods. So it's not a real limitation that way. It's more to give the user control of how they like the hearing experience to be. So that's how it works. And we very much believe in that approach. And then for OTC, I think the honest answer is that we don't fully know the OTC market exactly the size of it, given all the players into it. If we look on our own business, I mean, as we are communicating, I mean, it's growing nicely. It's growing. I mean, it's growing double digit and it's trending towards a break even here. So I think we... we saw very healthy progress both in growth and bottom line improvement throughout 24 and these trends we do believe continue so it becomes of course less of a drag on profitability and that's in line with how we plan for it.

And then when it comes to the IT, as we also said, as a fundamentalist on the guidance, we are also investing in IT and also fundamentally in operations and supply chain. That is a balance on actually having costs in your P&L as we mature these items. And of course also when it comes to the projects, it goes into the CAPEX side of it on the longer term ERP projects. And then they will come on stream as we complete the modules. So I think that's the way you should read into it, that it has both legs, right? And one of them is sort of here in the startup and initiation. And then over time, once we complete the assets, of course, we'll start to depreciate. And that is the way we also rolled it in, again, the long-term outlook for 2018. So there's no change there.

Great.

Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Oliver Metzger with OdoBH. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. The first one is on hearing and whereby in particular on the hearing aid market. So you guide for 4% to 6% unit growth on a positive side with clearly potentially France. But if you look on 24, the overall market seemed to show more muted development around the globe than the years before. So can you elaborate a little bit about your view on the market? So what makes you more confident on 25, apart from, say, the French opportunity? Second question is on enterprise profitability. so in 24 you showed a quite strong progress in a tough environment now basically eventually you expect the recovery for a bit of turnaround for 25. what's your view how will the recovery impact profitability is is there an element like you you sell In the beginning of the recovery, more basic devices compared to premiums so that the mix deteriorates or improves. It would be great to have your thoughts or your expectations for this. Thank you.

thank you so much for a question if i if i start with a market uh we we we do acknowledge uh what you lay out in the question that 24 was a bit weaker than the the normal structural market growth on the other hand 23 was a bit on the strong side i mean we we we We are assuming, see it as our planning assumptions, that the market will find itself back to more structural growth rate. It is how we plan. There is, of course, always a level of uncertainty in any forward-looking projections. But in terms of our guidance range, it would take quite a lot for the market developer to change our belief here in the growth of our business, because a lot of this is also driven, of course, by the launch of a new platform where we believe we've been able to grow faster than the market. So that's probably what I can say. Then, as we know, in the last period, the US has been doing a bit stronger and Europe a little bit less so in particular parts of Europe. And we do assume over time that this will even out a bit to support the story just laid out.

Yeah, and then when it comes to the profitability of enterprise, we are, of course, very satisfied with the development we have shown in the improved profitability in enterprise from 23 into 24, because it's probably even more impressive as it's been in a decline with this negative 3% in organic growth. And despite that, we have actually improved our margins quite a lot. And I mean, that has been a very deliberate strategy from our side on the synergies and actually also being quite disciplined on pricing. If you go back to our capital market day, we back then also said that this was the year where especially we expected the hearing and enterprise to improve gross margins in 24. I think we have delivered on that. And then essentially from there on, it would be less of an improvement. Of course, again, depending on if we end up in the high or the low end of the guidance, which I earlier also said on the spread on the margins, points. Then, as we also said in the beginning, Here, finally, if the year concludes with the tariffs that we have assumed here in China, it will, of course, have an impact, as we said, on enterprise all by less than what we have seen in gaming. And as we said, hearing will not be impacted. And of course, that needs to be factored in. But let's see where it ends. We have set a midpoint that leads to the 0.5 basis points on our margin, right? And as it's a tariff, it's of course driven up to the gross profit line where it will impact. So I think that's as much guidance we can give you with what we know today and what we have actually included in the midpoint for us. Hopefully that clarifies your question.

Yes, to a certain extent, yes. But do you see some impact on the product mix in a recovery that say in recovery starts first with a more sophisticated product science or basic or is it distributed?

Let me share a bit more granularity on that. I think that there are probably two things taking place at the same time. One is the shift from wired to wireless, which we talked a bit around our capital market days also. And that's a very positive shift for us because we have a stronger portfolio and most of our portfolio in wireless. So if you take the US market in particular, that has been a bit overweight on wired. And that is also supporting ASP growth because wireless devices are a bit higher priced. Then, of course, you have a lot of different price bands of more entry-level headsets to more advanced headsets. Here, I think, a couple of years ago, when the market was declining quite a lot, we actually did see more the entry levels perform stronger and the premium a little bit less. that has evened out quite a bit in the last few years so i think it's a fairly i mean similar behavior now between the different price standards and and growth if you take the wireless category as an example and and our best assumption is that we probably will see that continue into the year basically okay that's very helpful thank you very much

The next question comes from the line of Nils Grand Homeless with Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I'll turn directly to one of my favorite subjects when it comes to GN, and that's your capitalization. So you made massive capitalizations in quarter four, had a net positive effect of $335 million. So, how should we think about that? Firstly, was that part of your guidance for 2024 that you would have such a positive boost from R&D capitalizations? And secondly, would that mean that we should expect higher amortizations for 2025? And then my second question on networking capital, would you expect further reductions in networking capital? Thank you.

Thank you for the questions, Nils. And it is correct on the capitalization on IMD that they were higher in fourth quarter. You probably also remember that when we reported out on the third quarter, we at that point in time said that the capitalization rate was lower than what we expected, but we would likely land the full year capitalization rate around 53%. And this is actually where we are right now. So yes, we had anticipated this uplift in the guidance and the way we also rolled it into the accounts. One thing, though, you should be aware of is also that there is IAS 23, where we have also had an expense on the financial items, where we have capitalised the ongoing R&D projects, and then it has a magnitude of these 50 million DKK approximately. So of course, that number, as this is a number that hits in the fourth quarter, sort of inflates your quarterly performance on these capitalizations. I really do think that what we said in quarter three still stands firm on the 53% on the capitalization rates for R&D. And as such, we are in line with the overall communication we did for 24. Overall, we do not believe that it has a large impact for the amortization coming into next year, these 50 million. It's over five years that they get depreciated. So, I mean, evidently it's 10 million DKK with that level. So we do not believe that that's going to change, and it is included in the way we guide today. Then when it comes to... The networking capital, I think we are at a level where we believe we can stay with the composition of business we have, with the inventory levels we have. We are of the opinion, though, that inventories should always be a high important focus area of ours. But I think most people would also acknowledge that the uncertainty on where the inventory sits on sea and air levels today. Of course, it's somewhat difficult to predict. We are fairly and quite committed to that the sea transportation is our preferred route. It yields the best cost position for us, and it yields the best CO2 emission profile for GN. But exactly how that then pans out with all the turmoil that's going on in the world, let's see. But I think we have a clear strategy on where we transport our goods and how it influences our networking capital.

Can you just briefly remind us of what kind of KFIX to sales ratio should we expect for 2025?

No, we're not guiding on that, Niels. So far, that's not a number that we give out. What we have said, just to give you some estimates, and also back to the capital market presentations, we had the cash conversion cycle of 50% to 70% excluding financial items. And of course, we say excluding the financial items because 24 was a year where we had more bond financing, and now we come into a more term loan financing, and that's back to, of course, the financial items that we have that will be higher, as we have also communicated throughout 24. Actually, that would happen in 25. And as such, of course, that takes down the cash conversion a little bit. So that would be my response to that.

Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Rikard Aderkrantz with Hadelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my questions to a quick one, please. So first question on Vivia. When did you start developing the AI features, just trying to get a sense of the timeline and speed? And also, should we expect or do you anticipate the need for any step up in marketing spend in hearing for the year, given how we've seen quite significant increase in marketing efforts in conjunction with launches from some peers recently? Thank you.

Thank you. When it comes to the underlying shift to go to machine learning as a way to process sound, that's been a very long-term investment, perhaps even up to 10 years. And it's also a fairly well-anticipated shift. I think what's happening now, it's coming together with the right level of chipset technology and the further kind of advancements on how we do this type of algorithm to make it possible. But in terms of as a concept of machine learning, it's been relatively well known in the industry as in the research communities. And it is something we're really invested in because we believe in it. And it's really a great capability to leverage to process sounds. And it's also something which you should expect that we will leverage into enterprise headset, most likely into gaming headsets and bars and other type of products over time, because it really helps you to control what sound you like to pick up, what sound you like to amplify, what sounds you like to suppress. It's a very powerful way of working with sound processing. So we have a great group of people really mastering this way of working and these technologies, and we do believe it will benefit us going forward from hearing, but also broader. In terms of the cost for Vivia, I mean, we have guided, of course, here as much as we can for the year and the margins for the group and so, but I think it's fair to assume that if we look on the hearing margin profiles during the launch pairs, we tend to take a bit more cost because you, of course, like to build the momentum for your new portfolio and so. In terms of the business, you probably should expect the hearing business both volume-wise but also margin-wise to start a bit slower in the year and then build up both volume and margins throughout the year. And this is very much how we normally do it.

Thank you for taking my questions. Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Subanki Gupta with HSBC. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. First, on the hearing business, could you comment on the market dynamics in North America? How has the sequential growth been there in hearing? And second, on tariffs, you are assuming impact only in gaming and enterprise, but you have

manufacturing sites for hearing in china as well so does it only cater to not non-north american region and that is why you don't see an impact from that thank you thank you so much uh if i start with with a north american business um if we look on q4 as i'm sure several of you have seen growth slow down quite a lot compared to q3 I think it was primarily driven about what happened a year ago when Q423 launched Nexia and had a very significant growth in several channels in the US. So it was really the comparison base that created this effect. And a little bit the flip side of that is that the rest of the world grew very strongly for us in Q4 and Europe also. So if we look over the full year, the growth was very broad based and actually on a similar level across the three regions and also in similar levels across channel types. It's nothing we are worried about anything. We of course take notice, but it's more the effects on how we launch the products. And now with Vivia coming and being launched first in the US, we do think we will be able to see a pickup of the growth momentum in the US as well with the help of the new hearing aid. And then if I comment on the tariffs, it is correct that we do manufacture hearing aids in China, but we also have significant hearing aids manufacturing in Malaysia. And then also we do the core chipsets in Denmark. So we have all the flexibility to supply the US market outside of China if we will decide to do so. But also the current tariff environment which has been in place under the previous Trump administration and the way we understand it now would most likely be exempt also as a medical device. So that is why we are guiding that we do not, I mean, we do not assess to have any impact for the hearing business. And I believe also some of our competitors have guided in similar ways. So that probably is the explanation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you so much, operator, and thank you, everybody, on the call.