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CDON Ab

Q12026

4/23/2026

speaker
Moderator
Investor Relations

Good morning and welcome to the CDON Q1 2026 earnings presentation. We are joined today by Fredrik Norberg, CEO and Karl Andersson, CFO. Welcome, gentlemen.

speaker
Fredrik Norberg
CEO

Thank you. Thank you and welcome to this earnings call and at a new time, early hours and we will continue with this new time going forward as well. Together with me today as usual we have our CFO Karl Andersson who will dig into the numbers later on. First, a little bit summary of who we are. We are one of the leading marketplaces in the Nordics, having 3 million active customers with 100 million annual visits. We are operating two segments, Cedion and Fyndik, with an asset-light and scalable business model. And we are operating in a highly attractive market with large potential where we can see an anomaly in the Nordics compared to the rest of the world in how you shop online, where we shop much less online through marketplaces in the Nordics. And that we want to change, of course. To summarize the quarter, we have a solid start of the year. We continue a solid growth from our last quarter. We have 14% in GMV growth and 9% in GPAM growth. We continue with a positive EBITDA trajectory and rolling 12 months we have an EBITDA of 27 million SEK. And now really happy to show that our European giants have begun to show their really good potential. And ending this quarter, 5% of our CDON's GMV consists of GMV from these giants. And really happy to also report that our growth initiatives are running according to plan. And we expect to see some scaling in that area through next quarter. So our GMV ended up just below 400 million SEC, plus 14% versus last year. Our gross profit after marketing, our main KPI, was plus 9% versus last year, ending on 42 million SEC. And our EBITDA ended on minus 2.8 million SEC compared to last year's reported of 0.2%. but also compared to adjusted for extraordinary costs of minus 4.4 million SEK. And we can now conclude that we have four consecutive quarters with growth and we continue with this solid growth trajectory that we had from Q4 last year into Q1 this year. And one reason for this, a small reason, but still now we can show the numbers for our European giants. So these numbers are from our five giants that now are live on CD-ON with supply with the sales. Looking at the bars at the bottom, you can see how the supply have grown. And now they have roughly 200,000 products live on CD-ON. Looking at the line, you can see the growth in GMV for these giants. And you can see it now for March, they are just below 7 million SEC in total GMV. And looking at the top, you can see their share of our total GMV for the CDON segment. Starting at end of September, October, just above 0% when they got onboarded. And now looking at the end of March, we can see just shy of 5% of the total GME. And we will continue to follow up on these giants as we see this is the main strategy for us to really create growth in our core business. Moving over to our growth initiatives. Starting from the left, we have our retail media business, enabling our merchants to push their products on site, getting higher positions in the listings and so on, but also enabling an open up for external brands to market relevant products on our site. We will report on retail media revenue that now according to plan is zero. but we are really going according to plan here. We have our technical solution in place. It's implemented during Q1 and is live now. We have our retail media manager have started and we have been able to run and test the whole technology with 15 different merchants throughout the quarter. And we're now looking into wrapping this up and starting to get the first revenue in the second quarter. Moving to the right, we have the Nordic growth opportunities where we want to really expand our exposure in the rest of the Nordic countries. We can see that we are very under-penetrated in the rest of the Nordics compared to Sweden, and we want to change that. Here we have chosen to share our main KPI, which is the Nordic growth. So these are the growth in the countries except for Sweden, of course. Looking into CEDEON, we have a 7% growth for this quarter versus last year for the Nordic countries versus 2% last year. For FINDIC, we have 32% for this quarter versus 38% last year. And of course, I mean, as we grow in FINDIC, it's harder to keep up this really high growth rates, but still we're happy to be above 30% in growth rate. We have throughout the quarter done improvements in the customer experience for the Nordic countries, but also focusing a lot on enabling more supply. And this is really the main enabler for the Nordic countries to get more of the good supply into the Nordics. One way of doing that is to integrate to aggregators, which we are just in the final step of a big Finnish aggregator, which will enable a lot of other merchants to be able to sell through Cedeon. We are also looking into expanding our existing good merchants in the Swedish market into the Nordic markets. Looking into the brand marketing, we are talking about really revitalizing our brands and reintroducing both brands into the market. It was a long time ago since we had brand marketing efforts in both brands. Here we will follow up on our main KPI, which is brand consideration. We will not share the brand awareness, and this is due to the fact that we have really high brand awareness. Both CDON and Fyndik are well-known brands, but the problem is rather the consideration that people can consider to buy from both segments. So this is the KPI that we will follow now. For CDON, We have a brand consideration of 42% and Fyndik 31%. And we compared to August last year, which is when we started doing this measuring with this measuring tool. So this is why we're choosing August last year. We have signed a partnership with a brand marketing agency called Save Our Souls and looking forward to be able to push the first brand marketing ads already now in the second quarter. And last but not least, we have our tech resource boost. Our new full-time employees but also consultants are in place and delivering with high output. And this has really been boosted with our agent decoding enabled by Claude's recent updates. And I must say I haven't seen this before. big of a change of output in the company ever that we have seen in Q1. Of course, the value from it is not instant, but I see that throughout the year, this will really boost everything that we're doing from finance to marketing to analysis and to building our platform. So really looking forward on that area also for the rest of the year. All right, that's it from me. Let's talk a little bit more about the numbers.

speaker
Karl Andersson
CFO

Thank you very much and welcome to the financial part of this presentation. Let's start with some headline numbers and reported numbers for the group. So growth continues with profitability on track and we can report a 14% GMV growth, equally strong across both of our segments. Net sales grew by 13% as 3P now make up an even larger share of our mix and therefore net sales correlates more closely with GMV. Also fairly high merchant performance fees in Findic contributed to net sales growth. GPAM increased by 9% following slightly higher marketing costs and an effectively flat take rate. OPEX increased compared to last year, but bear in mind that bad debt reversal of 4.6 million in the comparison figure. All in all, this led to an EBITDA of minus 2.8 compared to the 0.2 of last year. However, in an adjusted like-for-like comparison, we actually improved by 1.4 million compared to last year. So let's take a look at our segments starting with GMV and it was really balanced growth across both segments and both engines have been firing. The group was able to sustain the positive momentum from previous quarters and we did exceed the benchmark of Q1 last year and almost that of 24 as well. In the CDON segment growth was fueled by two strong forces. Both the giants that we spoke about that are improving our assortment, both in terms of competitiveness and coverage, and also overall strong performance in our large categories, both home electronics as well as home and garden. It was another strong quarter for Findik, where the growth could have been a bit questionable. Q1 could potentially be impacted by the timing of Chinese New Year's. However, this year the team worked very well and mitigated and managed those effects, and we got back to a double-digit growth in Q1, reversing the negative trend that we saw in Q1 of last year. So very happy about that. Segment take rates continue to diverge and just looking at the top line group take rate, which was effectively flat versus last year at 19.1%, we need to dive into the respective segments to understand this better. The CDO intake rate was down to 14% compared to around 15% last year. Part of that is due to the very intentional category and merchant mix that we see following the giants being onboarded and us focusing strongly in those two categories I mentioned. But also the negative gross profit from our 1P business, the clearance of old inventory, did have a negative impact on take rate in the quarter. Adjusting for the 1p negative gross profit, take rate would have been closer to around 14.5%, so not as big of a shift. In Findic, the take rate exceeded 34% and is very high. Last year, 31% was also high, and the growth this year is driven by the higher merchant performances. Underlying commission levels in the segment are stable. So this is really an incremental addition and not the structural shift to our take rates. Marketing cost intensity is stable and the spend infinity was rather elevated. So on a group level, marketing cost has percentage of GMV increased to 8.4 compared to 8% a year ago, but also down from the peak in Q4 of last year of 8.8. Also here, we need to study the respective segments. And in CDON, we were able to effectively stay flat versus last year and down from the peak in Q4. And the exit from PSEC as a channel did impact this. That channel was not profitable for us and we are actively looking to reinvest that marketing spend in other more profitable channels to find incremental volume to continue to fuel our GMV. For Findic, marketing costs increased to 13.5% and effectively showcases the continued growth of paid over organic traffic in that segment. Net of this, we land at gross profit after marketing, where Findic effectively drove the group GPAM growth. Effectively, all of the GPAM growth in absolute terms came from Findic. GPAM in the CDON segment was down 2%, but bear in mind that was driven of the take rate effect that we previously spoke about. In the case of Findic, the higher take rate more than offset the higher marketing costs, increasing our GPAN by some 25% year over year. Controlled OPEX as growth initiatives are proceeding well. OPEX is slightly higher than the adjusted OPEX of last year, up some 5%, but it remains controlled. We saw increased costs in personnel, reduced cost in consultancy, a very conscious shift. And happily, we can also see cost savings in our core tech platform, despite those increased AI costs that we spoke about. Also, in the quarter, we had 1.1 million of OPEX related to the growth initiatives, a number that we will continue to report on going forward for transparency. All in all, I would argue that cost control is maintained full stop. EBITDA trajectory remains intact when considering the adjustment of last year. Yes, negative EBITDA of minus 2.8 in a seasonally weak quarter, but it follows the pattern. on a like-for-like basis, it is an improvement. A small one, but it is an improvement. And I would really anchor on the chart on the right-hand side where we can look at the LTM EBITDA for the group. 27 million is a 3x improvement compared to Q1 a year ago. And the small difference versus Q4 is rather arithmetic than a dent to the trajectory. So we do remain on the positive trajectory where we see operational leverage on our costs where GMV flows through nicely to EBITDA. Lastly, a few words on our balance sheet and cash. Strong liquidity position with improving cash flow. Operating cash flow before changes in working capital was negative, 5 million, but follows the strong seasonal pattern of previous years. Q1 is our seasonally weakest cash generation quarter, and we do expect to get back to positive cash flows in the coming quarters. High end of period cash balance of 96 million compared to 77 million a year ago. The share rights issue completed in 25, of course, materially improved our current ratio. Merchant debt reduced to 107 compared to 133 million a year ago. So overall, I would argue that we are well equipped in a good position for continued growth in Q2 and onwards. With that, I leave it back to you, Fredrik, for some concluding remarks.

speaker
Fredrik Norberg
CEO

Yes, so we have a solid start of the year. We continue with a positive EBITDA trajectory and have a 3x higher role in 12 months compared to last year. We are on the right track with our key growth initiatives and our European giants are really picking up speed now. So all in all, a very positive and solid start of the year for Sidion Group.

speaker
Moderator
Investor Relations

All right. Yes. Thank you so much. So let's start with some questions then. And I figured we should address the giants first. Of course, like you mentioned, they go from 2% to 5%. Could you elaborate a bit on this? How does this impact? How is the current merchant mix? How does this impact the category mix? And yeah, just elaborate a bit on the mix here in relation to the GMB growth.

speaker
Fredrik Norberg
CEO

Yeah, so what they bring to the table is really a big assortment of good products with good quality, well-known brands and competitive prices. The flip side of it is though that they have lower take rates than maybe the type of merchants that Fyndik have on the segment with very high take rates. But we see all in all that this is a very positive growth that we will enable. And also that it aligns with our brand ambition for Ceylon. Ceylon will consist of this well-known brand's high quality type of supply. And this is the supply that these merchants are bringing to the table. We have five now that are live with both supply and sales. Of course, we have also a pipeline of additional giants that we continuously now are onboarding on-site. When it comes to the category mix, we have started to focus on consumer electronics because that has been really our main focus both for last year, but it will continue to be a very important category for us. But we are also now expanding into our – next categories that we're focusing on for this year.

speaker
Moderator
Investor Relations

Thank you. And this pipeline sounds very interesting. If we look forward, I mean, what conclusions can we draw from the ramp up time that you had with these giants that we saw now in Q1? Is there anything to deduct from this? Do you feel that can it be more efficient or is there something to be drawn from, you know, the historical pattern that we saw leading up now until Q1?

speaker
Fredrik Norberg
CEO

Yeah, one thing for sure is that it takes longer time than we want and expected. Now we know. Now we know how long time it actually takes. These are usually, you know, several billion SEC organizations in revenue and, of course, bigger organizations. So everything takes longer time. So that we have learned a lot from. So now we are adapting our expectations according to that, of course, but also optimizing the way of doing this business, onboarding them, what type of material are they expecting and so on. So I would say This will improve from this point of time, of course, but now we know for sure how long time it takes.

speaker
Moderator
Investor Relations

Thank you. And then moving on to the brand, you mentioned the new brand marketing agency partner here. What conclusions can we draw from this? Can you elaborate a bit on this? Where do you want to go maybe with the CDOM brand following this initiative?

speaker
Fredrik Norberg
CEO

Yeah, I think, I mean, one thing that we have reported is Or consistently almost increasing every quarter is our marketing cost as share of GMV. Now we have a stop from the CD-ON segment on that. But looking back, this has increased. And we see that in the industry that the dependency of Google increases for every quarter. One mitigation of that is to make people go directly into the site, click more emails and so on. And of course, that way of making sure that that happens is to do more brand marketing. And now is the time we can really be proud of what we deliver to the market now. We have great products and we have a good customer experience. And now it's time for us to go out and say, hey... Sidon is still around, and also Findic, and come and try us out.

speaker
Moderator
Investor Relations

And on the subject of marketing and customer traffic, could you elaborate a bit on the Prisjakt exit here, on the impact, and what can we deduct from this going forward? How do you perceive this?

speaker
Fredrik Norberg
CEO

I can start a little bit, and then you can hop in. Overall, it has been too costly for us. We haven't done any profit on it for some time, and now we took the decision that we need to cut it off. We are constantly elaborating on the marketing mix and trying new channels. And sometimes you need to also deduct channels in order to see their impact in total for the business. But this is something that really had in some categories both a negative effect and in other categories a positive effect since we could put more money into other categories.

speaker
Karl Andersson
CFO

No, it's a bit like playing 3D chess, right? I mean, you need to take a step back sometimes to understand which customer segments are we addressing with certain channels and whatnot, right? We now have very good data to understand if and how we could continue to work with price comp sites going forward. So I'm happy to see a sort of small but clear stop to our increasing marketing costs in the segment. Yeah, thank you.

speaker
Moderator
Investor Relations

And then moving on to the Nordic expansion, you mentioned here the Finnish aggregator that you're integrating right now. Could you just elaborate a bit or deep dive into your plans for the Nordic sort of market or your plans going forward here?

speaker
Fredrik Norberg
CEO

Yeah.

speaker
Karl Andersson
CFO

I mean, it's a two-part story, right? So firstly, we're working with the customer experience, the site and everything to make sure that it's up to par as per the different countries requirements and sort of desires. And secondly, it's focusing on supply. And the example of the Finnish aggregator is a very clear one. We're also working with the additional aggregators to expand their offering to the other Nordic markets and really to work with selective merchants, potentially the European giants, right, to get them to sell across all of our markets to make their offering equally strong. So two parts to that story. And we have made good progress in both of them during the quarter, I would say.

speaker
Moderator
Investor Relations

Yeah, thank you. And then finally, one question on the cash position and the spent. I mean, you highlighted, you painted a path last time we spoke. Could you just elaborate a bit, maybe highlight if there's been any major changes in your capital allocation strategy going forward? Do you feel that there's still leeway with the solid position that you are in? Maybe on anything that has changed, you know, in the trajectory that you painted following the Q4?

speaker
Karl Andersson
CFO

No, I hope the trajectory we painted in Q4 was positive. We continue along that path. Our cash position is way better than it was 12 months ago. The reduced merchant debt, the improved current ratio, of course, adds a lot of stability. And we are well positioned to continue to invest in the growth cases that we raised the cash for during last year. And we are also heading into sort of better season where cash generation typically is stronger for our business. Q1 is challenging for retail, but we are of course looking forward to make both profits and generate cash in Q1 in the future.

speaker
Moderator
Investor Relations

That's very clear. Thank you. And then we're moving on to some questions on the line that we received. So I'll start off with some of the investment spend. How much investment spend was recognized in Q1 across different initiatives? And how should we think about the EBITDA trajectory throughout 2026, given the gated approach to spending?

speaker
Karl Andersson
CFO

So we invest a little bit over five and a half million in sort of development projects and tangible assets relating to development of our tech platform, slightly higher than last year, but rather in line with what we anticipated going into the year. So we expect continued sort of OPEX and CAPEX related to the growth initiatives. We don't have a 26 target. We have a 27 target of 100 million of EBITDA. But as we said, the EBITDA trajectory continues to be positive with the strong growth figures. We would expect continued operational leverage that would trickle down to further EBITDA. As we said, 26 will be a little bit of an investment year. We are continuing to building for the future, but we also do have a sort of foundational positive view on the EBITDA development.

speaker
Moderator
Investor Relations

That's very clear. Thank you. And then one question coming back to the giants. Maybe we have addressed this, but we will highlight it, see if there's any new nuance. Onboarding of large European merchants was somewhat delayed from Q4 2025 into Q1. Can you give us an update? How many merchants are now live? What GMB contribution did they generate in Q1? And what is the revised timeline for the full ramp up?

speaker
Fredrik Norberg
CEO

No, we gave all the numbers here in the slide. And yes, it was delayed probably about three months. And we learned a lot from that. But we have already from last year worked up a good pipeline of good merchants waiting to get onboarded. And we are looking forward to onboard more throughout the year. Five giants are now live with supply and sales. And we will expand that during the year.

speaker
Moderator
Investor Relations

Thank you. And then one question on the retail media. Do you have any concrete KPIs that you could share from Q1 considering retail media, I guess, revenue generation or anything that could give some nuance to that?

speaker
Karl Andersson
CFO

The short and boring answer would be no, right? Q1 was the development quarter. We did work with the pilot merchants. We did work a lot with sort of free credits for them to understand both how the tool works, but also for us to learn from it really. So it was only really towards the end of the quarter where we went live. We are now looking to ramp up across markets, across sites, and also inviting all merchants and really getting them up to speed. We do carefully track, of course, the operational performance of the different ad formats. And we're working with the combination, right, of sponsored products on our category pages, on our listing pages, on our product detail pages, description pages. So it will be a vast span of different KPIs that we'll track. Revenue was zero in Q1, but very much according to plan in the quarter where we built for the future.

speaker
Moderator
Investor Relations

All right. That's very clear. Thank you. And then one final question. A new CCO joined in January 2026. Has this affected the commercial strategy yet? Are there any early changes in the direction compared to the priorities outlined in the Q4 call?

speaker
Fredrik Norberg
CEO

No, that's not correct. So we don't have a new CCO in 26. But we will get a new CCO in 26. So hopefully I can get back on that in the next call.

speaker
Moderator
Investor Relations

All right. Sounds very promising. Thank you. And I'll leave it to you to any concluding remarks. Thank you.

speaker
Fredrik Norberg
CEO

And thank you for your attention. And looking forward to see you in three months again.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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