Verkkokauppa Com Oyj

Good morning and welcome to our webcast on second quarter report. If you have any questions, please feel free to send them to investors at verkokaupa.com and questions will be then answered at the end of the presentation. Today joining with me and available for questions, CFO Jesper Blomster. As always, I will start my presentation with the market and operating environment, then a few highlights out of the report of this morning on financials and strategy execution, then outlook for the rest of the year, key takeaways and questions, if there are any. So let me start with the operating environment. We have been pretty much operating in the same kind of surroundings here in the Finnish market for the last quarters and years. We have been facing consumer uncertainties. We saw a small improvement in consumers outlook on their own economics going 12 months ahead. But still, this time being is considered extremely unfavorable for discretionary shopping. Also, from the macroeconomic side, GDP is not expected to recover strongly in the Finnish market, so that is not expected to support any economic growth. On the other hand, we see some positive signals from the retail sector in specialty retail, but also in our main market consumer electronics, we saw that the market slightly grew during the second quarter. This was boosted by HD transition, which is happening at the moment in the Finnish market, and that had a positive impact in TV category sales. We were able to gain market share in this market surroundings, not only in certain categories, but widely brought in our assortment. Biggest highlight probably out of the report is the strong revenue development. For the first time for many, many months and few years, we were able to report double digit growth. revenue growing by 10.4%. Basically all channels, all segments were able to contribute on a positive note. Especially we are happy with our online site growing by 16% B2B consumers head to head by plus 10. On top of the basic core business, we are gaining momentum in our international efforts, sales outside of the Finnish borders growing as much as over 40%. From categories, besides the TV categories, we were also able to have good momentum, for example, in IT, in computer categories. We are especially happy with our own brand's development, again, overperforming to the market, growing by over 20%. We have been focusing on our margin for the last year heavily. Again, we were able to report improvement in margin, stating to many, many activities that we have been running through, successful category management, focusing on certain strategic partnerships, having good negotiations on terms and commercial activities. Good dynamic pricing, for example, inventory on a healthy level, no obsolete stock. So this is all contributing positively to the margin. That said, our season sale was not starting in the way we were expecting due to really cold summer in Finland. So we had to also invest in certain areas, for example, in AC devices. Um, If we then combine the strong revenue development with the margin development, this all was accompanied with cost efficiency measures continuing to kick in, especially in personal expenses. We were able to have a significant profit improvement to previous year. Comparable operating results stood at 2 million. In comparison period, we were reporting 1.7 million in loss. So the turn is continuing nicely. Inventories, the absolute levels that we are operating at the moment, we are actually quite satisfied with. We have been starting ramping up for the second most important season of the year, back to school, back to business. We have positive outlook on that. So this is elevating the absolute figures and therefore no decrease to previous year. Morally important it is what is the obsolete level and we are happy with the status at the moment. From financial, nothing surprising. Cash flow slightly decreasing from previous year, mainly to the reason that we are ramping up inventories for the upcoming season. From the first quarter, also actively utilization of cash discounts impacting that figure slightly. Good cash position, equity ratio steadily going into the right direction. Obviously not on the level we want it to be, but we are working or continuing to work on that. Certain investments conducted mainly due to IT servers also enhancing our capabilities of conducting fast deliveries. We informed the market that we are planning to execute a transition selling our consumer financing businesses to Norion Bank and their business unit Volley here in Finland. This is expected to happen during the latter half of the year. approximately 34 million purchase price. Why are we doing this? Well, first of all, we want to concentrate on our main business, which is retail. Secondly, we don't want this to be a bottleneck, rather having a partner who can support our growth ambition also in consumer financing, not from their own balance sheet. This will fortify our balance sheet significantly. And we also want to be in a position to offer our consumers the best possible financing portfolio. And we believe that we have a good partner for that. We have been actually doing business with this partner for many, many years already. Beside the operational solid performance, we also see that our strategic initiatives are kicking in or continuing to kick in. We are transforming retail online throughout our fast deliveries and fast delivery capabilities. The volume during the second quarter growing by 30%. Not only the one-hour deliveries, but also other delivery metrics and methods during the same day, within the same time. evening, for example, are showing really positive impact, growing by over 60%. Not only growing and gaining market share, we see that our customers are the most happy with our line of fast deliveries, NPS as high as 80 during the second quarter. We have the capabilities of utilizing today all of our stores also as logistic hubs with our own parcel lockers and therefore also accelerate online shift in those areas. Today, out of all online sales, over 20% is fast delivered to consumers. So this is a big part of our business nowadays. Own brands, extremely important to have high quality own brands with really attractive price points, continuing to gain momentum, growing significantly again, more and faster than the market by over 20%. The share of total sales almost 8%. So we are well in line with our own expectancy to have this contributing 10% or more of total sales by end of 28. So although we didn't get that backwind that we expected from cooling devices, still a strong performance in our own brand portfolio. Besides the Finnish core businesses, we are expecting our international business to be the third stream of revenue development During the second quarter, we were able to have growth outside of the Finnish border as high as over 40%, mainly with our current partners in Scandinavia and certain European countries. It's good to bear in mind that in the second quarter figures we don't have any or any significant impact from the Amazon partnership. We are ramping up that or we're ramping up during the second quarter and the commercial activities are expected to kick in during the third and fourth quarter. What do we expect from the market? When we listen to banks and economics, it is not expected that there will be a significant turn in the Finnish landscape from GDP wise. It's also therefore not expected that there will be a significant boost in consumption. Rather, we expect a mild recovery continuing and that having a positive impact. We do believe that inflation will be on a low level. We do expect that the interest rates level will be freeing up cash to consumption during the second half of the year. That said, we also expect the price fight to be increasing during the second half. We also do strongly believe that we have the right recipe for this market, for the upcoming market surroundings. All of our strategy focused areas are yielding positive results at the moment. Therefore, no need for guidance revisiting. We are still expecting revenue development to be positive the previous year and also comparable operating result to increase from previous year. So if I sum up the second quarter and the whole presentation, we can say that it was operationally and strategic a good one. Strong revenue development coming from all channels, all segments, most of the categories fueled by international success in Scandinavia and certain other European countries. Margin development continuing, cost efficiency measures yielding expected positive results. gaining market share with the sale of our consumer finance business, really fortifying our financial position. So all in all, if we look at the first half, we can say it has been as planned and therefore a success. Now I'm looking at questions. It seems that there are no questions at this time. No. So thank you from my side and have a great summer.