Harvia Oyj

There is a very special place for the body, mind and spirit. And it's easy to reach. It can be hot. It can be cold. It can be pleasantly warm and smoothly cool. Outside and in. It elevates you and all around you. It feels and does good. Like no other place can. We know this place. We come from this place. We have our own very old word for it. It's the same in every language. So, we invite the whole world to explore, embrace, and enjoy it. Always in your own very special way. Let's sauna for the body, mind and spirit.

Hello everyone and welcome to Harvia's second quarter 26 earnings webcast. My name is Matias Jarnefelt, I am the CEO of the company and with me I have Ari Vesterinen, our chief financial officer.

Hello, welcome.

Today we'll start by our presentation as usual and I will be covering the highlights of the second quarter business events and key financial numbers. I will also briefly touch our strategy implementation. After me, Ari will be then going through the financial performance through in more detail. During the time we present, you are welcome to send your questions via the chat and we will be more than happy to answer your questions after the presentation. So let's get started. Quarter two highlights, starting with the top line. We're very happy to report that we delivered double-digit revenue growth, which mainly was driven by very strong performance in North America. Our revenue increased by nearly 12% to 52.8 million euros, and all of this growth was organic. North America really was the highlight out of our regions, driving nearly 40% revenue increase during the quarter. This also boosted then the sauna and Scandinavian hot tub product category as that represents a large share of our business in the Northern American continent. This is also a very special quarter for us because we went through a significant IT and process upgrade program during the quarter. And the background to this is that Harvia over the past years has grown significantly. And we strongly believe that in the coming years there is plenty of growth opportunities for Harvia to seize. And we want to prepare the company for significant scaling, and scaling that we can do in a very productive way. That includes, for example, increasing the level of optimization in our operational key processes. And because of this, we have now modernized our IT systems. Last year, we implemented this in our Lewisburg US sauna cabin factory. and this year during the quarter two we implemented that in our main heater factory in our headquarters in Murame Finland. While this will be supporting our strategy implementation and growth ambitions going forward it had a temporary short-term negative impact on both top line and bottom line and we estimate that Approximately four million euros worth of deliveries that would have otherwise happened already during this quarter were postponed to a later phase. We expect that the majority of this four million will be then realized in our quarter three numbers. Now, because of this Muuramme IT and process transition, it had a significant impact on regions that are heavily dependent on technical products as part of their portfolio they sell, mainly the heating products. And this touches special regions like Northern Europe, which is very much a heater region for us, also strongly continental Europe and APEC and Middle East areas. and this is visible in the numbers that you have seen. APEC and Middle Eastern Africa was also affected by the continued war and uncertainty in the Persian Gulf region. However, the Gulf region represents a rather small share of our total revenue. Last year, it was around 2% of the total revenue, representing roughly 4 million euros. and out of this our current estimate that up to half is at risk which potentially could be one percent impact on our growth during this year. Profitability was impacted by postponed deliveries. Adjusting operating profit was 8.6 million euros and that represents 16.2 percent of revenue which compared to our usual levels is of course on a low level. Main impact to profitability came really from the postponed deliveries as we are in high gross margin product business. There was also some one-off costs related to the upgrades such as additional IT support needed, some overtime, etc. But majority of the impact indeed came from the postponed sales. There was some impact also for the gross margin from the product and channel mix mainly because so much of the growth came from our sauna cabin business in North America and typically the sauna cabins have a slightly lower gross margin compared to our technical equipment side of the product portfolio. But overall we feel that the gross margin we delivered was on a good healthy level and we also managed to have a rather smooth transition and cost management in the company during the time of the Murame Go Live project. We always estimate our progress with two lenses. One is the financial results that we deliver continuously. The other is what is the progress we make on our strategic initiatives to make the company stronger for the future, lay stronger foundations for long-term growth and profitability. And this was a very busy and a good quarter in that sense. The Murame process and IT upgrade was a very significant undertaking for us involving a lot of Harvia people and I'm very thankful for the hard work and commitment of Harvia team delivering the transition as planned and we understand that when You have a significant IT upgrades that always comes with some risk. And I'm very happy to report that we returned very close to normal operational capability by the end of quarter two. And we expect that we are in full operational capacity during this ongoing quarter three. Also, we've been continuing on investments to drive growth, especially in facilities like expanding our Lewisburg factory in West Virginia. to support our Northern American continued growth. We've also invested in machinery in other factories, now investing in IT infrastructure that supports scaling of the business, and we've continued our investments in R&D and product innovation. and we feel that Harvia is very well positioned to shape and lead the global sauna market as it continues to grow and we do it through multiple means such as product innovation, commercial excellence, operational excellence and also by becoming what we think is possible the ambassador of the whole category and as part of that we are pursuing activities to increase the awareness of the health benefits of sauna. And there are some examples that are tangible already now in quarter two, such as we've collaborated with the University of Jyväskylä here in Finland and High Performance Athlete Research Academy to advance the science of sauna. Also another example of our increasing digital and design leadership is that Harvia Phoenix, our kind of a mid-range touch panel that we introduced around a year ago, earlier won IF Design Award and during the second quarter won a very prestigious Red Dot Design Award. So very well done to the teams behind these initiatives. Then summarizing the key figures. Revenue at 52.8 million, and that's 11.7% growth year on year. And at comparable exchange rates, the growth was close to 13%. And all of this growth was organic. Adjusted operating profit at 8.6 million euros, and that represents 16.2% of our revenue. Operating free cash flow was at 3.1 million euros and this was impacted by a number of things. One is we have made quite significant investments during the quarter in expanding the production capacity, especially in North America. Also, costs related to the HOT, basically Harvey Operational Transformation Program, which is the nickname we have for our IT and process upgrades. Also, we have taken in material to Our Murame factory and to our Louisburg factory so that we are well prepared to catch up the delayed deliveries and start building the finished goods inventory as we head towards the high selling season of the winter. First half key figures here so revenue at around 111 million euros and that's roughly 12 percent growth and at comparable exchange rates that's nearly 16 percent mainly because during the first quarter there was such a significant impact on the currency conversion from USD to euros compared to the situation a year before. Adjusted operating profit at 21 million, and that's 19.3% of revenue, and operating free cash flow at 15.1 million euros, and that's nearly 60% cash conversion. Then when we look at the revenue distribution geographically, the picture is obviously quite striking. So all of the growth coming from one single region, North America, growing at nearly 40 percent and actually above 40 percent in local currencies and all of that organic. And then we see the impact of the heating production stop during the kind of the transition to the new systems in Murame, in that we were kind of under delivering the heater products during this quarter to Northern Europe, Continental Europe and APEC. Much of that, as I said, we expect to be then recouped during the quarter three. APEC and Middle East was also impacted by the geopolitical situation in the region, as I mentioned when I opened the presentation. Northern Europe, slight decline, standing now at 21% of our total revenue. But when you assess this, you really should have in your mind that Northern Europe is very much heaters only region for us. So Murame production stop and ramp up had a significant impact on the reported revenues now during the quarter two. In continental Europe, the story is the same. And what I'm happy to say is that when we look at the interest to our category in Europe, not just continental Europe, but also northern Europe, we see that actually interest continues on a very positive path. So our expectations for the future of Europe is that it does provide us good growth opportunities in the years to come. North America, obviously the shining star of the quarter, growing 39% in euros and approximately 43%, 42% in USD. And that already being the biggest of our reported region, obviously had a very positive impact to the group reported revenue. During this quarter, Northern America represented already 44 percent of our revenue and if we actually combine then the non-European regions so include APEC in quarter two we had 55 percent so majority of our revenue coming from outside Europe. The main driver for growth in North America was very strong performance of our sauna cabin business, which came from both the key account channel that we have, but also very strong growth in our own direct to consumer web store. So I'm very happy to report that across our sauna cabin channels, we saw very, very positive steps forward. Here, APEC and Middle East decline of nearly 5%, representing now 11% of our revenue. But here there's a couple of remarks. The region grew by over 50% a year ago in the comparison period. Also, this region is prone to project deliveries, especially in the Gulf region. And if we think about Harvia's business portfolio, actually the only place where we have meaningful project business is in Middle East. And this business is impacted by the current situation. There have been kind of issues with actually getting deliveries to the sites and also quite a few of the projects that were supposed to be completed during the second half of this year have been postponed. So as I said, we would expect that potentially for the whole group level, the Gulf situation could have around 1% impact on our reported revenue. But I'm also very happy to say that when I look outside the Gulf region, I see continued positive momentum. And for us, there's significant countries in the region that we have been developing systematically, like China, Japan, Australia, and those all continue to perform in a good way. So then looking at the product portfolio that we sell, heating equipment declined below 50% impacted by the Murame factory transition. Saunas and Scandinavian hot tubs increased to 30% fueled by significant growth of sauna cabin business in North America. Steam products came down a couple of percentage points impacted by two things. One is that steam business we mainly have in two regions. It's Middle East, and North America and we had issues in both. Middle East projects were impacted by the Gulf War and in the Northern America we see that the steam category has been growing significantly more slowly than the traditional sauna category or infrared sauna category which get a lot of And the other thing is that there are also some internal improvement opportunities that we are working through and our expectation is that those will have impact during the second half of this year. So here again the picture saunas, the shining star growing by 44%, all of the others growing but in particular heating equipment impacted by Murame and steam products unsatisfactory performance for the reasons I mentioned. Harvia is strategically very interestingly positioned. We are the global leader of a market that is growing from a niche to volume health and wellness market. And in this transition, our strategic ambition is clear. We want to continue to lead and shape these global sauna markets as it continues to evolve and grow. And we want to provide everyone reasons to experience sauna and join the global sauna family. and we drive towards this ambition through implementing four strategic focus areas. Answering questions what, where, to whom and how. What is really related to product and portfolio leadership and being more of a solution business than just an individual component provider. Where refers to us winning the countries that matter the most for the future of sauna business. to whom it's marketing and sales excellence and channel management excellence so that we have the strongest position in the channels that matter. And also how is very important, very much related to ability to grow, to build capacity, to do it in a productive way and driving new competencies as the sauna business continues to move from product business to increasingly a wellness and lifestyle business. and I'm happy that during the second quarter we did take significant steps forward in terms of product competitiveness which is visible in our performance in the sauna cabin business in North America. I think we have a very competitive range there now ranging from the entry-level price point to also higher price points. Continued strong demand for our heating equipment which is our core and And one of the evidence is that we've been recently getting actually quite many design awards for our products. And Harvia Phoenix, one of the highlights, and it continues to sell very, very well. So really hitting a sweet spot in the market with design functionality and price point. In winning the strategically important market, it really is about winning the key countries that matter. And I'm very happy to say that while there is now obviously quite striking difference between growth of North America and declines in all the other regions, it's basically due to the production transition that we've talked about. The demand signals we have in the large countries across the world where we focus continues to be very positive. Leading in key channels, so channel expansion and being more competitive, sharper, more interesting, inspiring across our channel landscape continues to bear fruit and Northern American performance reflects this. Also, I think that we've been able to do margin management pretty well over the past kind of a year after the tariffs and the currency changes, in particular related to U.S. impacted quite a lot our business. We continue to be very well on top of things and are well positioned for the future as we keep ramping the production of Muurame up. And one of the examples of our channel development initiatives is that we want to do more of what works. And what clearly works very well for us is our own direct-to-consumer web store in North America, and we've recently brought that to the German-speaking continental Europe, and the ramp-up is progressing as planned. One of the biggest challenges we as a company have is actually keep up with the growth. Demand for our products seems to be on a very good level and ability to keep growing significant numbers and do it in a productive manner is one of the key priorities of the management. And as we already covered, this IT and process upgrade in Murame was a significant step for us and I'm very happy to report that it went as planned and as I mentioned in the beginning we've already gone through the same in US so now we have our biggest factories in the new era what comes to the way Harvia works and the IT landscape that we utilize in our business. and we continue to invest in building capacity. The biggest priority for us obviously is in the US as we can see that already for multiple years we've grown tens of percentages per annum and it was easier to grow when you grew let's say 40 percent on 10 million but when you grow 40 percent on 100 million just the absolute steps obviously are much bigger. So this requires a lot of attention from us and also we need to move ahead of the curve so that we don't hit the ceiling and can The investments and development activities that we've implemented we believe will enhance our capacity to grow, scalability, productive scalability of the business, operational resilience, and also transparency, so business steering through data. So we're very happy that we've now been able to take this step. A couple of practical examples that I thought I'd mention. One is that we think Harvia could truly become the category leader of thermal wellness, sauna wellness worldwide. And part of that is that we want to advance what I would call the science of sauna. and there's been quite a lot of research done on, in particular, traditional sauna, the Finnish sauna, but there are also some blind spots. And Harvia partnered with the University of Jyväskylä, which is known for its sports science department, and also the Finnish high-performance athlete research institute, KIHU, Keep studying and understanding more and one of the things that was not really studied was what's the impact of humidity for the biological response of a person who is in the sauna. There's been research on the temperature and the duration how long you stay in the sauna but not really about the humidity and which is very important part of both traditional sauna experience so The Water on the Stone, what we call löyly and also steam sauna category. And it turns out that the impact of löyly is actually very important because we were really measuring very precisely the environment and sauna plus we had 50 Fifty adults, they were actually, for example, swallowing a temperature sensor pill so we could measure accurately their core temperature. We were measuring skin temperature, measuring their heart rates. And we can see that roughly 25 percent of the heartbeat increase and core temperature increase actually due to the humidity. which means that you can have clearly a lower temperature sauna as long as you use steam or water enough and get same response as in a hotter but drier sauna. And this helps us design what I would call sauna wellness programs that are very pleasant and kind of Just what the person needs and wants. So wellness in a pleasant way. And wellness, longevity in a pleasant and relaxing way is a value proposition that resonates extremely well across the world. And this is an example that Harvey has an opportunity to truly become the ambassador of this category. The other example I wanted to mention is that we won, as mentioned, the Red Dot Design Award for the touchscreen control panel Harvia Fenix, which I said hits really the sweet spot of working really nicely in a hot and humid environment through a gentle touch user interface connected to the internet, over-the-air software updates, et cetera, hitting the right price points. and the sales response from the market has been very good for this product. So now we go to the financials more in detail, so Ari. Okay, thank you.

Here we see again the seasonality of our business first a couple of years backwards. Typically the quarter four or quarter one have been the highest quarters and last winter quarter one was clearly higher than quarter four. and typically the net sales go a bit lower during the summer months of Q2 and Q3. But that trend has changed probably a little. Sauna is not necessarily anymore so much of the just winter product in the biggest markets, but it's also selling well during the Q2 and Q3. But despite of that we had really the delay of the net sales in Q2 of approximately four million and since that came from the production of sauna heaters We have actually quite high operational leverage there. It had also a substantial effect on the relative profitability of that part of the business. So without that delay, we would have had substantially better Q2 figures. But we are happy also with this situation since the most important thing is really that we have passed the most important part of the project and the capacity is close to normal. Here are the main financial numbers and actually there is not very much deviation from the last year and a couple of things I would like to Actually, the number of employees, it has increased about 64 employees and 59 of those came into the group in US. So we have been actually employing quite much new people in US for the production, for the sales, sales support and so forth. So the operations are growing very nicely there. The networking capital was still on a rather high level. And the fact is really that we had not reduced the inventory, but we had increased it practically, especially in Finland, to be prepared after the more peaceful Q2 production for the deliveries. So we had end of contract. Q2, plenty of materials and work in process prepared for the future sales in Finland. During that quarter, we also had Some extra costs, as Matias mentioned, for the transition. We had a downtime of the production, about three weeks. We were not shipping, not producing. And during that time, on the other hand, we also let people take their extra holidays and so forth in the production. So, in fact, if you compare the Q2 in 25 and 26, our share of the... Direct or our share of the labor in total actually didn't increase and at the same time also the other operative costs they were managed quite well during Q2 they were also relatively lower than a year ago. Also due to the A slightly unfavorable sales mix. More sauna cabins, less equipment. The material percentage of the sales increased slightly, but it belongs really to this restructuring or the pause of the heater and similar shipments. Okay, here we see the seasonality of our operative free cash flow and cash conversion and typically after the Q2, Q1 we go down with the free cash flow and now we had again Lower cash flow in Q2 and typically it increases rapidly during Q3 and Q4 when we turn the higher inventories to money and so forth. The leverage is on a rather low level. We have plenty of room even to our financial long-term targets, 2.5 to take more debt if we want for some restructuring M&A or so. Or we could also temporarily exceed even this 2.5. So it's not the upper limit, but it requires, of course, discussion and separate discussions. separate information if we exceed this 2.5 but so there is a really firepower for acquisitions available. The net financial items, they vary sometimes based on the IFRS valuation of certain items, but really the cash finance expenses, paid in cash, they stayed quite stable also in Q2. Here we see the quarterly investments, and as Matias told, we have had investments in IT infrastructure, expanding the Lewisburg facility, and product development, but we have also invested in real production machinery, both in Finland and in US, and also some solar power equipment and so forth. So, the Harvia's long-term financial targets, just to repeat, they haven't changed. We target 10% or more average annual revenue growth rate and the profitability adjusted operating profit margin over 20% and the leverage really under 2.5. We pay twice a year the dividends. So this time the annual general meeting accepted the board of directors proposal to pay 77 euro cents dividends for last year's results and the first installment was paid in April 39 euro cents and the rest is planned to be paid in October 26. So now it's time for questions. We have got plenty of questions and quite much related to the North America, understandable, but also for other regions and different product groups. So let's start and Matias will answer most of the business questions and if there is anything finance related, I will answer them more. So, Q2 sales included Euro 4 million sales shift into Q3. Can you confirm that the 4 million of delayed Q2 deliveries is now fully secured within the Q3 order book? Is there any remaining risk of volume shipping into Q4?

The answer is that I can't guarantee it. But I'm highly confident that the majority of it will be delivered into Q3. But there might be still some slippage. Overall, I'm very happy with how the transition went. It was a very significant undertaking for us involving many teams, etc. And of course, you know, when something like that happens in the core of your business, also the CEO gets a little bit butterflies in the stomach. And now seeing how the factory works, how the processes have now settled, I'm very happy. I think we are in a positive situation where at the same time we are catching up from last year and experiencing strong demand from the market.

North America grew close to 40% in Q2 and you highlighted the expansion of sauna cabin distribution as one of the key drivers. Could you explain this in more detail? Additionally, how did sauna cabin sales develop among your existing distributors versus the newly added distributors channels?

For sauna cabins, we have two main sales channels in the U.S., especially when we talk about the high-volume categories. Easy to buy, easy to install products like the barrel sauna. Also, what I call entry-level sauna cabins from the indoors. They mainly go through two channels, our own direct-to-consumer and also what we would call the big box retailers, so mass merchants in the U.S. And We're actually taking steps in multiple ways and one of them is that we have very significant growth in our own D2C. I think we've hiked the sweet spot in how we market, how we drive traffic to the store. We've made over the past quarters also improvements like having really nice 3D modelings where you can kind of design your own product based on the Available options, see all the time how the price changes, fast deliveries, etc. And just the portfolio seems to be fitting very nicely. So what I would call product market fit for the products we make in Lewisburg seems to be very, very good. And one of the great channels is our own D2C. Having said that, we want to grow in all channels. And I'm pleased to say that the partners that we have are very happy with Harvia. They also see the growth opportunities that the category represents. They see that we have highly competitive portfolio that they can sell. They see that we have a track record of scaling and having the opportunity to scale with our partners. So there is also expansion activities, having basically stronger focus among our existing customers and also some that are new opportunities as customers for us.

Okay, then there is a similar two-fold question. Probably answered already the first part, but I ask it anyhow. How much of the North American growth came from the distribution channel expansion? That was the first part. Is it right to assume that this had a weakening mix effect?

I think the majority of the growth came from our existing channels. and I guess that's also a good sign that we've been able to scale our own channels and also existing business with existing partners and there is also some element with new accounts. The mix element had an impact on the profitability in particular the The share of materials of our revenue. The reason being that the sauna cabins tend to have a slightly lower gross margin compared to our technical products like the sauna heaters, the control panels, etc. And that side of the business was now particularly significantly impacted by the essentially ERP program that went live and process improvement program that went live in our biggest technical equipment factory here in Finland.

Sales of the steam products were down 14% year to year in Q2. Has thermosol acquisition disappointed you? Why you have not been able to get out the sales synergies? When we look at the

Steam. There's a few things to bear in mind. One is that before we acquired Thermasol, practically our business in steam was in Middle East and particularly the Gulf region. And the reason is that steam saunas, Turkish saunas, hammams, they are very strongly part of the culture in that part of the world. And then Thermasol really added more like the steam element for North America. And actually we had some hiccups what comes to both so it's what you see in the reported figures is not only thermosol but it actually combined impact on basically significant project-based business being disrupted in the Gulf region but at the same time it is fair to say that we're not fully satisfied with the pace that we've been able to scale the steam business in North America multiple actions are underway and as I mentioned that I would hope that we can report positive trend change during even the second half of this year relating to the channel, the account management and also some activities related to portfolio development. Now what comes to Thermosol, Steam was one of the key reasons why we bought them. So as a global leader of the sauna category and kind of owner of thermal wellness, we feel that we need to have a portfolio that covers traditional sauna, infrared sauna, steam sauna and cold wellness products. So of course, strategically adding steam has been something we wanted to do, but it was not the only reason. Also, we got some of the leading digital capabilities when we acquired Thermosol. So when we bought them, they had beautiful Android based kind of full sized tablet sized control panels to be used in showers and steam saunas. So really optimized for wet and hot environment. And that's something we are utilizing across the Harvia Group now and the other thing was opportunities to sell more high-end products from Harvia Group portfolio through Thermasol channel and that's also actually progressing pretty well so we can't have too narrow kind of focus when assessing the performance of the acquisition of course we would have wanted to gain some more but we feel that there continues to be a strong potential in the in the acquisition that we made which we plan to Get into outputs, business outcomes in the coming years.

Once the new capacity comes online, should we expect a step up in growth and mainly improve delivery capabilities and shorter lead times? The answer is yes.

and it basically relates to both Lewisburg which mainly there's two different I would say development initiatives that have been going on. One is expanding physically the Lewisburg factory and basically the current expansion phase is expected to be completed actually next month so in the month of September already helping us for the fourth quarter and first quarter kind of winter season that is coming. And it is clear that we are preparing quite a lot additional products, finished goods as we approach that selling season, as we hope that we can continue to deliver solid growth also during this winter season. And as I said, just the absolute jumps as the percentages Thank you very much. In quarter four, as a result of the kind of system and IT renewal, it's much more scalable, streamlined, automated, helps scale. Previously, we have been very much dependent on manual labor for scaling, and now we can automize, utilize more, for example, AI-driven smart business processes, et cetera. So we're very much looking forward to the productivity and scalability benefits from the project.

On the APAC and MIR weaknesses, could you quantify in Euro terms the total impact from the customer project postponed and delays related to the Murami factory upgrade during the quarter?

Well, what we can say is that the Gulf region represents roughly 2% of our revenue. So in 25 figures, it means roughly 4 million in a year, 1 million per quarter. and half of that is at risk for this year. So roughly speaking, two million for the full year with, I would say, waiting now to more the second half of the year. When we put things in perspective, that represents roughly a 1% impact for our full year growth on a group level. And we don't separate now in our reporting kind of specific Thank you very much.

Still continuing the same topic still. Based on your comments that the Iran conflict is expected to continue affecting AIPAC and MEA in H2 second half of the year, should we interpret this is implying that regional sales are likely to decline year on year in the second half as well? Well, I just gave you the guidance and you do the math. How did SAVES develop in other key APEC countries like China and Japan? What was the estimated Q2 impact from higher raw materials, freight and energy costs related to the Iran conflict? How do you expect those cost pressures to evolve in H2? And have you implemented any price increases to offset the higher input costs?

When we look at the crisis in the Middle East, we've been looking at it from multiple angles. One is impact on the global economy that could then impact consumer confidence and then could impact our business. But so far in the key markets, when you look at the demand picture, it continues to stay positive, which is the main thing for us. Then everything else we feel we can manage reasonably well. Of course, as a company that has a truly global supply network, we have two factories in the US, a factory in China, multiple factories in Europe, also multiple suppliers of components. We've been optimizing our supply chain to take into account the situation in the Gulf. What comes to kind of core supply chain processes, we think we can manage them without significant impact on the margins. One element that is important for us is logistics costs, because when we think about, for example, a sauna cabin, it's a big and bulky product from logistics point of view. There's some price increase pressure there, but overall, we've shown during the last 12 months that we can actually react, I would say, reasonably Thank you very much.

There is sometimes strong volatility in the freight costs, but we have to also mention that quite a big part of that direction sales are sold with ex-works conditions, so actually the customers Thank you very much. Where do you think the softness in steam market demand stems from? Are you seeing any market share losses?

One of the key things that drives demand for saunas is the awareness and excitement around the category. And we do actually a lot of analytics on what happens in the digital space. Google search trends, social media, kind of assessments etc and what is quite clear is that there's a lot of activity in social media around the traditional sauna and infrared sauna and significantly less for some reason for the steam sauna category so there is clearly more tailwind for traditional and infrared saunas than for So basically the way we see the market is that out of these three sauna types, steam is the slowest growing. And that's now been impacted globally in one of the heartlands of steam sauna, i.e. the Gulf region, because of the situation we already talked about. Having said that, when we've assessed our situation, we think that there is also an element of Competitive pressure, which we need to react to through account management, channel development and also continued product development. And we have a quite comprehensive multipoint action plan that we are implementing with our STEAM And I'm very much looking forward to seeing the trend improve clearly. And right now, my estimate would be that we could see that already during the second half. Of course, it heavily is dependent actually on the Middle East situation. But overall in the US, I think the trend change is doable within this year.

Can you comment on the sales mix in North America? How big share of the sales went to third-party retailers in Q2? Is the retail margin closer to Harvia's average margin or how would you describe margin in retail channel?

If we think about our channel landscape in North America, it could be summarized in four. One, our own direct-to-consumer D2C. The second is the big box retailers. Then third is what I call sauna, pool, spa, wellness dealers. and fourth is other sauna cabin manufacturers who need a heater inside their solution. And the big box retail is the biggest, our own D2C is the second, the dealers third and the sauna cabin is fourth. But all of them have a meaningful role. There are some margin differences across the channels, but mainly it comes from the product mix. So typically the sauna cabin as a product has a slightly lower margin than the more complicated technical products with electrics, digital, etc. embedded in them like the sauna heaters and the control panels.

Back to the Persian Gulf region. What was the negative impact of the Persian Gulf region in Q2 and what run rate should we expect from the situation going forward? I think we answered that, but it's 2 million on the annual level. Yeah, exactly. Overall, are you content with the sales mix you achieved in Q2 or do you see room to improve?

There's two answers to this. On one hand, yes, because I think that we really performed very well with the products where we had availability. And on the other hand, no, because this Murame Go Live had obviously quite significant impact on the, what I would call, some of the highest margin products we make in this company. So that obviously is visible. Whether that could have been managed somehow differently, I don't know, I think we did a pretty good job. And what comes to the gross margin development as we now have ramped up the production in Murom and continue to increase output, keep driving growth, I think you should expect a basically positive outlook for the gross margin development.

How much inventory remains elevated due to the IT implementation and how much working capital release should we expect in H2? We don't release this so exactly, but I have to say that for instance in Murame, Finland, the increase of the inventory value during Q2 was Thank you very much. This year, but we can't give so exact numbers for that. That's the same phenomenon every year. Regarding acquisition targets, what kind of valuation levels are you seeing at the moment?

The valuation levels change quite dramatically depending what kind of target we are talking about. If we are talking about market leaders for high growth categories in the US, there the multiples are clearly higher. If we talk about maybe a smaller player in more kind of traditional sana category, let's say in Europe, basically less. At the same time, They would add less into our business strategically and business-wise. Now, of course, I understand that it's taking a while since previous meaningful sized acquisition, but it is also something that is quite sensitive to both macro environment and also sell-side circumstances and sometimes also buy-side circumstances. And if you think about, for example, last year, there was significant disruption to the M&A market due to The Liberation Day. The tariffs, the dollar, many of the infrared players import significant portion of what they sell from China and the Far East. So there was a lot of uncertainty around what happens to that. Also during that time on our side, our management was also very busy in managing pricing, et cetera, and adjustments to the kind of fast changing situation. There are of course multiple discussions going on, but as there are multiple variables, sell-side expectations, sell-side changes in business trends, buy-side circumstances, it's very hard to give you an exact date when we could report something concrete, but we continue to work. We are very well aware of the target universe and also generally where the multiples are. Typically we would be looking at always kind of accepting lower multiples than Harvia. I think Harvia has through its kind of multi-year journey in the stock market as a publicly listed company through transparency, through growth, through profitability, through resilience, justified multiples that are higher than the targets that typically would be privately owned companies. So that's the way we look at things.

Could you give us an update on the high-end sauna rooms launched under Thermosol?

Multiple design awards win, great exposure in interior design and architectural magazines in North America. So basically the start is pretty good. Of course, it takes time to catch up as the what I would call the standard volume can be so significant. But part of what we see in North America, there is also contribution from us playing also now more strongly a higher end game than in the past.

U.S. business, are you now starting to see strong replacement demand you did not have before acquiring almost heaven saunas?

Well, the way we look at things is that roughly speaking, a replacement cycle for a sauna heater that's in private use would be maybe seven years, seven to ten years. And our journey in North America, and if you think about just seven years back, we talk about basically 2018, 2019. 2018, we had three million business on an annual level. In 2019, we had a little bit more than 10 million because we had acquired almost seven saunas. Actually, so the base in North America is rather small, but it will come. It will come. For the sauna campus, there's also a replacement cycle, probably somewhat above 10 years, but that's part of the... Part of the Harvia's long-term value creation plan that there is also replacement sales, there's also upgrade sales. So we also take an assumption that if somebody has entered the world of sauna through entry price point product, they might be then willing to invest in an even better experience when it's time to renew. And that's something we actually see in many of the mature markets, that kind of dynamics. Also, we're working on digital leadership, digital solutions for thermal wellness and sauna. and we also see a future where digital subscription, digital kind of service sales could also have a meaningful part of our revenue and profit profile.

Excluding the special items such as the delivery shifts and tariff impact in Q1 2025, Your revenue growth has accelerated a lot while the consumer confidence interest rates haven't changed much. Is this reflection or reflective of outside market share gains following the growth OPEX started in Q2 24 or do you feel that your initiatives have yet to generate meaningful returns?

I think Harvia is probably the most exciting company in this space. for many reasons and one of them is our product innovation where we put more effort some years back and the pinnacle is visible now through products like the Harvia Phoenix and also a much more competitive digital offering that we have some really great design products actually like the one in the background we had this particular product line called Harvia Cylinder only available as an electric heater version and now it's available in beautiful wood burning version as well so kind of we When we look at the portfolio, what we have right now and what we had a couple of years ago, I think there's clear step up. If we think about traditionally the kind of the core sources of competitiveness of Harvia, we have been very much a product and production company. So good products manufactured and distributed in effective way. and we have also added I think more excitement in our marketing, more collaborations with social media influencers, more actually quite groundbreaking and novel content like the sauna research that I talked about. If you look at the social media there's a lot of repeating of the old studies and what we now see is that when Harvia together with the research academies and universities and also Toyota Motor Company actually was part of the research team. They have high performance rally team in the region where we also have our head office. So we actually collaborate with Toyota on multiple areas. That research outcome has actually caught fire in the social media because something new and this is exactly what we want to do. We want to be the most inspiring, distinct, Thank you very much.

In the report you mentioned the expansion of the facility in Louisburg, West Virginia, progressed during the period and will be completed in late 26. This seems to be far ahead of expectations and what's going to be the impact? On a similar note, you have dramatically increased your headcount.

Basically, I could paint you a picture which basically is a chart of Harvia's revenue growth in North America from 2018. We continue to grow double-digit, the absolute steps as I mentioned are getting much bigger. What we've done is that around one and a half years ago we bought around eight hectares of land. What is it in acres? 20. 20 acres of land around a Louisburg factory to have options to grow. The next thing was we developed a site plan. What would it look like if we would be making multiples, not just 2x, not just 3x, but multiple x's more. Sauna units in that site. And then we basically made a plan backwards from that grand site vision. What are then the first meaningful steps, first bottlenecks we are hitting? And this particular The phase that we're now completing relates to mainly warehousing and shipping. And warehousing because we need to prepare again a bigger finished goods inventory as we go into the winter season than last year to be able to deliver what we hope is going to be a good demand season. And the other thing is that actually the yard has been very busy with lorries or trucks. So we have now more like this shipment slots for trucks. The next step is we're actually, you know, of course already It's very much in our minds. The next step would be also increasing the production floor space. But it's a kind of multi-year journey where we try to kind of on one hand anticipate and move a little bit ahead of demand so that we don't hit the ceiling, but not take too big jumps at the same time. So kind of grow as you go, but still lean a little bit forward. That's the approach.

Another note this person has been observing us quite closely. EOS has been hiring quite a few new employees over the past two months, about six percent is my estimate. How has EOS been performing in the domestic versus foreign markets and how can its U-command control unit drive growth in infrared and steam outside the US?

We basically have two global master brands. We have acquired a lot of companies and some of them came with the brand and we decided to discontinue them. But we decided to focus on two brands globally, Harvia and EOS. Harvia is what I would call premium but mass market. And then a global market leader for Sauna and EOS is luxury... prestigious both for commercial and residential use and for example EOS has absolutely beautiful what I would call AUFKUS saunas sort of experiential saunas where which also include this sort of continental European sauna ritual called AUFKUS and we are by the way we have been sponsoring the world championships of AUFKUS last year in Italy in Verona this year it's going to be in Berlin, in Germany, and the main sponsor is EOS. So actually EOS as a brand is really establishing a very interesting sort of distinct position in the sauna market that helps us capture opportunities while also keeping Harvia's core brand kind of focused in what it does best, which is a premium product, but price points that really can drive significant volumes. And overall, if I'm looking at the multi-year performance of EOS, we're very pleased.

How will the CAPEX evolve from here and what's the capacity productivity impact from for your IT upgrade? Okay generally the CAPEX we have been saying that it's at minimum four to five percent of our annual revenues but this IT really allows us to be more exact in material management and for forecasting and planning the production. To measure it somehow in additional production capacity, it's a bit difficult, but it really takes us to the next level in our operations. How substantial are UK, Japan and Australia for the revenue mix today? Could you share the demand you are seeing from those markets, such as underlying growth rate and your expectations for the future?

Well, we share our revenue by the four reported regions and profit on a group level, so we don't go into very specific details. By the way, Kind of a disclaimer is that while there's a lot of investors in this call, there's also our competitors. And we are, I would say, the lighthouse of this global sauna market worldwide. And the only pure play public company is as transparent as we are. So we are always balancing between giving relevant information that our shareholders can use to assess the performance and strategy execution of the company, While not giving away too much, because as I said, we know that there are multiple competitors always following our webcast and closely analyzing what we say. So this is a reason why we have made the decision to report as we do. But all in all, all of these markets have strong momentum.

Thinking about acquisitions, is infrared now more attractive than steam? Do you think less growth in steam in structural and why?

If I'm thinking about like the last five years, it is clear that infrared grew much faster than the steam. I think the key reason is actually companies in that space doing great marketing. Building availability and the product is very easy to buy and install. It actually takes, there's no water involved and actually the power consumption of the infrared panels is less than a heater for traditional sauna. So for indoor use, the easiest product you can buy is the infrared sauna. And in the other spectrum is what I would call higher-end steam saunas, which is pretty much always a bathroom renovation project or even new-built house project, where you have steam generators, piping systems, valves, etc. behind the walls. And I think there is significant impact on this easiness of installation. The price points and also social media exposure to different sauna types. Now, at the time when we were acquiring Thermosol, it was also now or never type of a situation because actually the steam sauna side has consolidated clearly earlier. So many of the smaller steam sauna players had already been acquired by larger companies and practically became unavailable for a buyer like Harvia. So we decided that we want to move there to secure a space in that corner of our global sauna market. Infrared is very interesting, that's for sure. And there are activities on multiple fronts that we could strengthen our position in the coming years quite substantially.

If buying infrared in North America, what do we need? Distribution channels, known brand in North America or something else? Could you build a sizeable infrared business around Harvia brand in North America?

I think there are different options. Of course, organic growth is one, and then M&A is another one. And then if you think about that, infrared out of the three sauna types is the largest in North America. Out of infrared traditional and steam, the biggest market in terms of volume and most likely also revenue or value-wise is infrared saunas. And we are already quite big. While we don't have I would say a meaningful footprint yet of the infrared sauna you can imagine that there are actually some players that are actually quite sizable and us kind of building position from ground up starting from low levels you know we anticipate that even if we would be utilizing our operational capabilities marketing etc it still will be a long-term catch-up game so because of this reason we feel that there is a need for what I would call growth platform I would say significant step forward doesn't necessarily have to be the biggest player but has to be meaningful player in that in the space that that that we could use as a clear accelerator both in terms of market presence sales competencies portfolio infrared is Actually, in terms of selling it, it's almost like it really is the farthest in this what I would call a wellness game. And basically the way infrared products impact in these sort of consultative sales sessions where customers book free wellness consultations through online and then get a call from an infrared sauna provider. Sales Consultant. That is a machine. We've seen it in actually multiple of the infrared sauna players and there are opportunities both in actual portfolio, footprint of the market, sales competencies, commercial engine, etc. that I think would benefit acquiring.

And now the last question. When will you get tariff refunds from the US, please? The fact is that we have applied and we are studying these opportunities. We have got small amounts of the tariffs paid last year already back, but it doesn't really change anything essential in our numbers. So just small amounts and they're We study then the future possibilities to get more back. So thank you very much for following