BHG Group AB (publ)

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm joined by our CFO, Jesper Flemmel. I will walk you through the operational highlights and our strategic progress before Jesper covers the financials in more detail. I will come back to summarize and then we will do our very best to answer your questions. Slide two, please. Q2 Highlights The second quarter was another step forward for BSG. We delivered accelerating organic growth, continued to see improving profitability and generated strong cash flow, while at the same time continuing to execute on the strategic priorities we communicated on our Capital Markets Day. The quarter was characterized by three main themes. Operational performance continued to improve. Organic growth accelerated to almost 10% and adjusted EBIT improved for the 11th consecutive quarter. Second, we continue to execute our strategy. We further increased our share of unique assortment, accelerated our AI initiatives and completed the first acquisition in a long time with the acquisition of Hillerstorp. And finally, we continue to see encouraging market developments, demand improved across most of our key markets and categories, supported by stronger consumer purchasing power. Overall, we believe the quarter demonstrates that our strategy is working. Slide 3, please. Summarizing the key numbers, the most important takeaway is that sales growth accelerated and came in at plus 3 billion SEC in the quarter, representing an organic growth of 9.6%. This being a significant growth acceleration compared to the first quarter and we can also happily conclude that we have continued growth in all three business units. Adjusted EBIT in the second quarter was 134 million SEK, a growth of 16 million compared to last year. An improvement in profit in both absolute numbers and EBIT margin. but somewhat negatively affected by an unfavorable product mix in the home improvement business unit. Operating cash flow of plus 338 million is a strong cash flow and in line with a seasonal pattern. Leverage continued to decline to just above two times EVDA, giving us increased financial flexibility. Slide four, please. Growth. We are very pleased to see that the accelerated growth we saw at the end of the first quarter continued and accelerated during the important second quarter. The strongest contribution came from our gardening category, including robotic lawnmowers, in combination with furniture and home decoration also developing well. Importantly, growth was broad-based across our businesses, with all major markets contributing positively. We continue to see strong momentum across the Nordic region, Germany and Eastern Europe. We saw growth in Finland also in this quarter, but we unchanged see Finland as the most challenging of our key markets. The improving macro environment is clearly helping, but our performance is primarily driven by our own execution, a stronger assortment and improved customer offering. Overall, we remain unchanged positive regarding demand and market development going forward. We also expect the online market to grow faster than offline in our categories. Increased online penetration, even further fueled by the current AI development, making the online shopping experience clearly surpassing the offline experience. Slide five, please. Profitability. We are proud to highlight that BSG has now delivered improvements in adjusted EBIT margin, both in absolute numbers and in EBIT margin over the last 11 consecutive quarters. That demonstrates that the operational implemented over the past few years continue to deliver results. That said, profitability in the quarter was somewhat below our own ambitions. The primary reason was an unfavorable product mix where we saw strong growth in gardening equipment, partly driven by robotic lawn mowers, the category with lower gross margins that has in the quarter diluted the total gross margin level. We unchanged see gross margins in branded goods as a challenging area, but the gross margin effect on home improvement that we saw in this quarter, we see primarily as a temporary mix effect rather than a structural issue. Our long-term strategy remains unchanged, and we continue to focus our efforts on strategic initiatives and additional revenue streams. This in combination with our focus on efficiency and cost structure. Slide six, please. Strategic priorities. As mentioned, our strategic priorities remain the same as we communicated on our capital markets day. First, we continue to increase our share of unique assortment. This strengthens differentiation while also improving our long-term margin potential. Second, AI is becoming an increasingly important tool to create competitive advantage both for customer experience, thereby driving growth and creating efficiencies. During the quarter, we accelerated our AI initiatives together with our strategic partner Algoritma within key areas as improving customer service, quality, speed and efficiency, streamlining product upload and securing data quality, decision support and product information and customer guidance, helping customers find, understand and choose the right products easier and faster. We continue to execute on our strategy of build and trial and then to scale the solutions across the group where we see real measurable business value. And thirdly, we focus on executing our disciplined M&A strategy. The acquisition of Hillerstorp is an excellent example of the type of acquisitions we want to make, strengthening existing platforms with limited financial risk. Slide seven, please. A few words on the Hillerstorp acquisition. Hillerstorp fits extremely well into our long-term strategy. It strengthened one of our largest and most attractive product categories while adding a highly respective Swedish brand with a strong market position. The acquisition is product-focused, expands our offering, increases our share of unique assortment, and creates attractive opportunities for cross-selling across several of our platforms. Equally important, it is an asset-based, low-risk, bolt-on acquisition in line with the disciplined M&A framework we presented at our Capital Markets Day. We continue to evaluate similar opportunities that strengthen our existing platforms while maintaining strict financial discipline. Slide 8, please. Let me conclude this section before I hand it over to Jasper with what is perhaps the most important message. While we cannot influence interest rates, consumer confidence or the broader macro environment, we can control how well we execute our business every single day. Our focus remains on supporting our business in being the best online retailers in our categories and markets. Building the best online customer experience through the right assortment, competitive prices, the best and most relevant offering and efficient operations. The improvements we have delivered over the last several quarters are not driven by one-off actions, but by consistently executing on these fundamentals. We believe that continued operational excellence combined with our strategic initiatives in unique assortment, AI and discipline M&A will take us to the goal that remains unchanged and clear, to grow faster than the market while improving profitability. And with that, I will hand it over to Jesper who will take you through the financial performance in more detail.

Thank you, Gustav. And please turn to slide nine. As Gustav already mentioned, we delivered another strong quarter with organic growth of almost 10%. Net sales increased by 10.2% to more than 3 billion SEK, while organic growth amounted to 9.6%. Looking at our segment, what stands out this quarter is the broad-based growth across the group compared to the first quarter, organic growth accelerated in all three business areas. From a geographic perspective, all of our major markets delivered growth during the quarter. The sales trend in the Nordic region remained favorable, mainly driven by Sweden and Norway. Outside the Nordics, sales growth in Germany and Eastern Europe was particularly strong. Turning now to slide 10 and profitability. Adjusted EBIT increased by 16 million SEK compared to last year, reaching 134 million SEK. This corresponds to an adjusted EBIT margin of 4.4%. We're pleased with the profitability improvement in premium living and in value home with both the improvement and the profitability level. In home improvement, Profitability also improved year over year. However, margin development was impacted by category mix effects, which I will come back to on the next slide. Move on to slide 11 and the EBIT bridge. The EBIT margin improved by 0.1 percentage points compared to last year, reaching 4.4%. Looking at the bridge, the main negative impact came from product margin, primarily within home improvement, As mentioned, this was driven by category mix effects. Garden, which has structurally lower margins, grew strongly during the quarter, while bathroom, which has structurally higher margins, was impacted by tough comparables. Marketing also had a negative impact compared to last year, reflecting the uneven demand across categories, mainly within home improvement, where this reduced marketing efficiency. At the same time, the other cost areas developed positively. Most notably, organizational costs improved, reflecting continued cost discipline and operating leverage. Overall, the positive development across the cost base largely offset the pressure from product margin and marketing, resulting in a slightly higher adjusted EBIT margin year over year. Moving on to slide 12 and cash flow. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to SEK 339 million during the quarter. The strong cash flow was driven by EBITDA together with a positive contribution from working capital. Compared to last year, accounts payable developed somewhat stronger than inventory as we deliberately maintained higher inventory levels to support the strong growth in the garden category. Turning to the graph on the right, liquidity increased from 301 million SEK at the beginning of the year to 565 million SEK at the end of the quarter, supported by the strong operating cash flow. Slide 13, please. Turning to our financial position. Net debt amounts to 935 million SEK at the end of quarter, and net debt in relation to LTM adjusted EBITDA improved to 2.0 times compared with 3.0 times at the same point last year. In addition, we had 800 million SEK in unutilized credit facilities at the end of the quarter. With that, I will hand back to you, Gustav, to summarize and conclude.

Thank you very much, Jesper. Slide 14, please. Let me conclude this with three key messages. First, our business continued to move in the right direction. We delivered our seventh consecutive quarter of organic growth and our 11th consecutive quarter of year-over-year profitability improvement. While we are not yet satisfied with our profitability level, the consistent progress over several quarters gives us confidence that our strategy is working. Second, we continue to execute on the strategic priorities that we have communicated to the market. During the quarter, we further expanded our unique assortment. We accelerated our use of AI across the businesses and completed the acquisition of Hillerstorp. These initiatives are all aimed at strengthening our competitive position and improving our long-term earnings potential in line with our financial targets. And finally, we remain firmly focused on operational execution and becoming the best online retailer in our markets and categories. As we have said before, we cannot control the macroeconomic environment Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm joined by our CFO, Jesper Flemmel. I will walk you through the operational highlights and our strategic progress before Jesper covers the financials in more detail. I will come back to summarize, and then we will do our very best to answer your questions. Slide two, please. Q2 Highlights The second quarter was another step forward for BSG. We delivered accelerating organic growth, continued to see improving profitability and generated strong cash flow, while at the same time continuing to execute on the strategic priorities we communicated on our Capital Markets Day. The quarter was characterized by three main themes. The national performance continued to improve. Organic growth accelerated to almost 10% and adjusted EBIT improved for the 11th consecutive quarter. Second, we continue to execute our strategy. We further increased our share of unique assortment, accelerated our AI initiatives, and completed the first acquisition in a long time with the acquisition of Hillerstorp. And finally, we continue to see encouraging market developments, demand improved across most of our key markets and categories, supported by stronger consumer purchasing power. Overall, we believe the quarter demonstrates that our strategy is working. Slide three, please. Summarizing the key numbers, the most important takeaway is that sales growth accelerated and came in at plus 3 billion SEK in the quarter, representing an organic growth of 9.6%. This being a significant growth acceleration compared to the first quarter, and we can also happily conclude that we have continued growth in all three business units. Adjusted EBIT in the second quarter was 134 million SEK, a growth of 16 million compared to last year, an improvement in profit in both absolute numbers and EBIT margin, but somewhat negatively affected by an unfavorable product Operating cash flow of plus 338 million is a strong cash flow and in line with a seasonal pattern. Leverage continued to decline to just above two times EVDA, giving us increased financial flexibility. Slide four, please. Growth. We are very pleased to see that the accelerated growth we saw at the end of the first quarter continued and accelerated during the important second quarter. The strongest contribution came from our gardening category, including robotic lawnmowers, in combination with furniture and home decoration also developing well. Importantly, growth was broad-based across our businesses, with all major markets contributing positively. We continue to see strong momentum across the Nordic region, Germany and Eastern Europe. We saw growth in Finland also in this quarter, but we unchanged see Finland as the most challenging of our key markets. The improving macro environment is clearly helping, but our performance is primarily driven by our own execution, a stronger assortment and improved customer offering. Overall, we remain unchanged positive regarding demand and market development going forward. We also expect the online market to grow faster than offline in our categories. Increased online penetration, even further fueled by the current AI development, making the online shopping experience clearly surpassing the offline experience. Slide five, please. Profitability. We are proud to highlight that BSG has now delivered improvements in adjusted EBIT margin, both in absolute numbers and in EBIT margin over the last 11 consecutive quarters. That demonstrates that the operational improvements we have implemented over the past few years continue to deliver results. That said, profitability in the quarter was somewhat below our own ambitions. The primary reason was an unfavorable product mix where we saw strong growth in gardening equipment, partly driven by robotic lawn mowers, the category with lower gross margins that has in the quarter diluted the total gross margin level. We unchanged see gross margins in branded goods as a challenging area, but the gross margin effect on home improvement that we saw in this quarter, we see primarily as a temporary mix effect rather than a structural issue. Our long-term strategy remains unchanged and we continue to focus our efforts on strategic and additional revenue streams. This in combination with our focus on efficiency and cost structure. Slide six, please. Strategic priorities. As mentioned, our strategic priorities remain the same as we communicated on our capital markets day. First, we continue to increase our share of unique assortment. This strengthens differentiation while also improving our long-term margin potential. Second, AI is becoming an increasingly important tool to create competitive advantage both for customer experience, thereby driving growth and creating efficiencies. During the quarter, we accelerated our AI initiatives together with our strategic partner Algoritma within key areas as improving customer service, quality, speed and efficiency, streamlining product upload and securing data quality, decision support and product information and customer guidance, helping customers find, understand and choose the right products easier and faster. We continue to execute on our strategy of build and trial and then to scale the solutions across the group where we see real measurable business value. And thirdly, we focus on executing our disciplined M&A strategy. The acquisition of Hillerstorp is an excellent example of the type of acquisitions we want to make, strengthening existing platforms with limited financial risk. Slide seven, please. A few words on the Hillerstorp acquisition. Hillerstorp fits extremely well into our long-term strategy. It strengthened one of our largest and most attractive product categories while adding a highly respective Swedish brand with a strong market position. The acquisition is product-focused, expands our offering, increases our share of unique assortment, and creates attractive opportunities for cross-selling across several of our platforms. Equally important, it is an asset-based, low-risk, bolt-on acquisition in line with the disciplined M&A framework we presented at our capital markets day. We continue to evaluate similar opportunities that strengthen our existing platforms while maintaining strict financial discipline. Slide eight, please. Let me conclude this section before I hand it over to Jasper with what is perhaps the most important message. While we cannot influence interest rates, consumer confidence or the broader macro environment, we can control how well we execute our business every single day. Our focus remains on supporting our business in being the best online retailers in our categories and markets. Building the best online customer experience through the right assortment, competitive prices, the best and most relevant offering and efficient operations. The improvements we have delivered over the last several quarters are not driven by one-off actions, but by consistently executing on these fundamentals. We believe that continued operational excellence combined with our strategic initiatives in unique assortment, AI and discipline M&A will take us to the goal that remains unchanged and clear to grow faster than the market while improving profitability. And with that, I will hand it over to Jesper who will take you through the financial performance in more detail. Thank you, Gustav.

And please turn to slide nine. As Gustav already mentioned, we delivered another strong quarter with organic growth of almost 10%. Net sales increased by 10.2% to more than 3 billion SEK, while organic growth amounted to 9.6%. Looking at our segment, what stands out this quarter is the broad-based growth across the group compared to the first quarter, organic growth accelerated in all three business areas. From a geographic perspective, all of our major markets delivered growth during the quarter. The sales trend in the Nordic region remained favorable, mainly driven by Sweden and Norway. Outside the Nordics, sales growth in Germany and Eastern Europe was particularly strong. Turning now to slide 10 and profitability. Adjusted EBIT increased by 16 million SEK compared to last year, reaching 134 million SEK. This corresponds to an adjusted EBIT margin of 4.4%. We're pleased with the profitability improvement in premium living and in value home with both the improvement and the profitability level. In home improvement, Profitability also improved year over year. However, margin development was impacted by category mix effects, which I will come back to on the next slide. Move on to slide 11 and the EBIT bridge. The EBIT margin improved by 0.1 percentage points compared to last year, reaching 4.4%. Looking at the bridge, the main negative impact came from product margin, primarily within home improvement, As mentioned, this was driven by category mix effects. Garden, which has structurally lower margins, grew strongly during the quarter, while bathroom, which has structurally higher margins, was impacted by tough comparables. Marketing also had a negative impact compared to last year, reflecting the uneven demand across categories, mainly within home improvement, where this reduced marketing efficiency. At the same time, the other cost areas developed positively. Most notably, organizational costs improved, reflecting continued cost discipline and operating leverage. Overall, the positive development across the cost base largely offset the pressure from product margin and marketing, resulting in a slightly higher adjusted EBIT margin year over year. Moving on to slide 12 and cash flow. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to SEK 339 million during the quarter. The strong cash flow was driven by EBITDA together with a positive contribution from working capital. Compared to last year, accounts payable developed somewhat stronger than inventory as we deliberately maintained higher inventory levels to support the strong growth in the garden category. Turning to the graph on the right, liquidity increased from 301 million SEK at the beginning of the year to 565 million SEK at the end of the quarter, supported by the strong operating cash flow. Slide 13, please. Turning to our financial position. Net debt amounts to 935 million SEK at the end of quarter. and net debt in relation to LTM adjusted EBITDA improved to 2.0 times compared with 3.0 times at the same point last year. In addition, we had 800 million SEK in unutilized credit facilities at the end of the quarter. With that, I will hand back to you, Gustav, to summarize and conclude.

Thank you very much, Jesper. Slide 14, please. Let me conclude this with three key messages. First, our business continued to move in the right direction. We delivered our seventh consecutive quarter of organic growth and our 11th consecutive quarter of year-over-year profitability improvement. While we are not yet satisfied with our profitability level, the consistent progress over several quarters gives us confidence that our strategy is working. Second, we continue to execute on the strategic priorities that we have communicated to the market. During the quarter, we further expanded our unique assortment. We accelerated our use of AI across the businesses and completed the acquisition of Hillerstorp. These initiatives are all aimed at strengthening our competitive position and improving our long-term earnings potential in line with our financial targets. And finally, we remain firmly focused on operational execution and becoming the best online retailer in our markets and categories. As we have said before, we cannot control the macroeconomic environment, but we can control how well we serve our customers, how efficiently we operate, and how disciplined we are in allocating capital. Those are the areas where we continue to improve every quarter. Overall, we believe BSG is entering the second half of the year from a position of increasing strength. Our balance sheet is stronger, growth has accelerated, and the strategic initiatives we have invested in are beginning to deliver tangible results. While market conditions remain competitive, we are confident that our strategy, our market position and the capabilities we have built over the past few years provide a solid foundation for continued profitable growth and long-term shareholder value. Thank you very much for listening and now happy to do our very best to answer your questions. Please.

The next question comes from Alice Beer from ABG Sundahl Collier. Please go ahead.

Good morning, gentlemen. So, Alice Beer calling in for Benjamin today from ABG. Firstly, I was wondering if you could quantify the gross margin impact from Mix, please, related to the gross margin, then also what was the positive FX impact, if any?

I'll start with the gross margin and I'll hand the currency over to Jesper. We haven't tried quantifying the exact effect on the mix. As we have said, it comes primarily in home improvement and it comes primarily from the The difference in sales between garden and bathroom, where garden is a low margin category. This quarter also primarily driven by a very large sale of robotic lawn mowers, which is a low gross margin category. And then we had very strong sales for bathroom, which is a high margin category with quite a high share of own brands, where we had a lower share of sales this quarter. So that's where it comes from. That's where the difference comes from. So the mixed effect comes from, but we haven't quantified it.

And when it comes to currency, I think the effect is to be seen in the value home segment where we reported quite strong margins. I won't be able to quantify, but as I said, the effect is to be seen in the value home segment.

Okay, thank you. Moving on then. Your other external cost line stands out as well. It's rather high, going 18%. Could you explain this move as well, please? Is it AI2 or something else?

If you're looking in the P&L, you know that that line includes also marketing that grows in line with sales. So that explains most of the increase. If you instead look at the personal cost,

I think we can add that we're very happy with our cost control when it comes to fixed cost.

Okay, perfect. That was all for me. Thank you.

Thank you.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Daniel Schmidt from Dansky Bank. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. A couple of questions and coming back to the gross margin and I think you've been quite clear when it comes to the mix that you experienced in the quarter. But it's hard to get away from the fact that what you see the same mix in the coming quarters as well, especially on bathroom being quite strong likely in the second half last year on the back of the hike renovation deduction in the Swedish market.

I mean, we had a strong bathroom category development last year. That is definitely the case. But we're also quite positive looking forward into Q3 and Q4 because we think we have a very strong assortment. We have a high level of own brands in the category. So we're still unchanged positive of how we can develop the bathroom category. And I think the other main driver, robotic lawnmowers, is a category that drops significantly now moving into Q3 and Q4. So the difference should be significantly lower than what we saw in Q2. Yeah.

Okay. That makes sense. But if you add the US dollar and freight to that, Would you start to see the positive effects of the weak-used dollar fading in H2? And then on top of that, trade costs have gone up quite a bit, and I know there's quite a lead time. But still, how do you view those two components, if you add those to the equation?

I think the direction you're speaking of is definitely the right one. The timing is too hard to predict, as most of the products being sold in the value home segment has already been shipped or already in our inventory. So the direction is right. Timing is really, really hard to predict.

And I think we can say on freight prices, if Jaya and I expand on that, that we have seen increases on freight prices. That is correct. And if you look percentage-wise, they're quite high increases. But be mindful that we came from very low levels, and we still view the levels of freight prices as quite reasonable.

Okay. Now, what I'm sort of getting at, you're doing quite well now continuously on top line, and you've done quite a big journey when it comes to the cost footprint in terms of platforms and selling off businesses, trying to focus on where you're strong, basically, which has worked out well, but it seems like you're flatlining a bit more now. Is there any other sort of cost measures that you want to take in the second half of this year if you don't see the gross margin turning?

I mean, we're doing cost discipline all the time, and I think some of the AI initiatives we're currently implementing, we have seen the first effects on efficiency and cost reductions from them, primarily, I would say, in customer service, to some extent also in product upload. And I think it's also important to be mindful that we have delivered 11 consecutive quarters of the profit improvement, and even if the improvement was lower in Q2, that we're continuing this direction of improving our profit for such a long time, and we're confident in our plan to continue doing so.

Yeah. All right. And then maybe on to more detailed questions. Hillerstorp Acquisition, you haven't really given us any financial data on it. You can look it up yourself, and it looks like they had a top line of 75 million, but they are quite heavily loss making. Is that the case when you consolidate Hildestorp?

No, as it's an asset acquisition, we only acquired the brand and the inventory. And then, of course, our ambition is to keep as much of the sales as possible, but we won't have any losses.

It's important that we're transferring their business model of being primarily a B2B business into becoming a private label business. What we're basically doing is acquiring an asset with a high profitability from the brand in this category.

I got you. Is it going to be a fairly small add-on on top line? I don't know how much of their sales went through your platforms before this acquisition and you're also then shifting in terms of the channel that you want to approach. What should we sort of pencil in basically in terms of top line? Is that I don't know. Can you give us any guidance?

For 26, I wouldn't add anything, to be honest. The season is over. And then for 27, we're talking small amounts. Yes.

Okay.

We have limited possibilities to really, really work with the assortment for next season. So it's really a long-term investment that we believe in an important category for us.

And strategically important, both in our vision to grow our gross margin, but also in our ambition to differentiate our assortment.

And then just lastly for Jesper maybe, the earn out that you were supposed to pay now, is that going to come in Q3 instead or did I miss anything?

No, the updated numbers is that we will pay another 30 million this year and then next year the best guess is that we will pay somewhere between 50 and 60 million. And what's left will be equally split between 28 and 29.

And how much did you pay in Q2? I may have missed that.

20 million.

Okay. Okay. So the number came down quite a bit for this year compared to the latest guidance. Exactly.

And that has to do with not only trying to assess the amounts, but also timing of when put and call options are being exercised.

Yeah. Okay. That's good. Thanks a lot. That's all for me.

Thank you.

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

We have one written question. Could you please elaborate a bit on unique assortment and how

Yeah. As we have communicated, it's a core strategic initiative for us to grow our share of sales in unique assortment. We have very different levels today. In home improvement, the level is roughly 20%, if I recall right. In value home, which is where this is part of the business model, we're talking a share of sales in excess, I think, of 85%. While in premium living, we are somewhere in the region of just about 5%. So the potential for increasing the share of private label is primarily within home improvement and premium living. I think we're currently doing a really good job in home improvement, where we sort of with the vehicle of HAFA are selling brands as both Life and HAFA, as you mentioned, over the platforms of Big Hema, etc. And that is working really, really well. So I think One of our strongest vehicles, as you're pointing out, for growing this sort of share of unique assortment is using intercompany sales, basically selling the products we have developed ourselves over more platforms. And we are currently doing that. And as I said, it's working really, really well in home improvement. It's a little bit more tricky in premium living because premium, as it says, is more of a premium platform. There is brands that we can sell or we can take company sales there as well. We are doing so, but the share is still very small. But some of the restrictions when it comes to target audience makes that potential somewhat lower than in home improvements. So in premium living, the main focus is to continue to develop the existing brands, one of them being Scandi Living, as you mentioned, and they're actually doing a really good job with Scandi Living. And the share of unique assortment also in premium living is increasing, but not so much from intercompany sales, more from developing the assortment of our own brands. Any further questions? Good. That was it.

No more questions.

Good, then I say thank you very much for listening in and I wish you all a very good summer. Thank you.