Dometic Group AB (publ)

Welcome to Dometic Q1 Report 2026. Today I am pleased to present CEO Juan Vargas, CFO Stefan Friestet, and Head of Investor Relations, Tobias Norby. For the first part of the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by pressing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers. Please go ahead.

Hello, good morning everybody to this Q1 report. Welcome to sunny Stockholm, by the way. Wonderful that springtime is back and we have the light back. So moving over to the highlights. We see an increased uncertainty following both the tariff situation and the geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. We see already now oil prices being very, very high. We see as well inflationary movements in terms of freight costs, in terms of raw material costs that will down the road have some kind of impact on consumer confidence. We continue to see retailers, dealers being very, very careful in building up inventories and ordering what they need. At the same time, we see also differences across regions, and most probably the region where we see confidence index being the lowest is in the American region. Looking at performance, we are very happy to communicate that finally, after many quarters of negative growth, we are standing at the same level as last year. We are very pleased seeing the service and aftermarket coming back and showing a solid growth of 5%, positive to comments that is everywhere. So we see the three regional businesses within Land Vehicles and we see as well Marine everywhere also being positive from the service and aftermarket perspective. Distribution is slightly down, 1%. Mobile cooling being positive, which is good. We see also that the sell-through for the mobile cooling business has been very positive during the first quarter. And in reality, the one that we are still missing is the OEM that ended up at 4% down versus last year. but very much due to the RVVM in the American region. Perhaps even more positive is that both order intake and backlog continue to develop in a positive way. Positive development on ABTA margin ending up at 10.6 and really based on two different factors. On one side, we have a positive mix, with sales and aftermarket growing. At the same time, as we also see the savings coming from the restructuring program continue to improve. At the same time, we have many product launches. We have been launching products, especially on the marine side and on the mobile cooling side during the quarter. And in connection with the extra product development costs, we also have marketing costs to launch, to have successful launches for the new products. last but not least improved free cash flow even if it's negative is quite a bit less negative than one year ago and totally in line with historical numbers so as a matter of fact better than what we have seen in the last four five years in practice leverage ending up at 3.4 which which is slightly worse than one year ago, but following exactly the same historical pattern that we have seen due to obviously low invoicing levels in Q4 and low invoicing levels in Q1. If we move over to the figures, as I already commented, organic growth of zero with negative impact from currencies of 9% and then portfolio changes that continue to happen. delivering one percent in negative growth uh every day uh eight percent down versus last year ending up at 10.6 uh in margin in comparison to 10.4 an adjusted eps of 86 earn in comparison to 88 so very very close now and as i already commented negative cash flow but quite of an improvement in comparison to last year and a leverage slightly higher than what we had one year ago. Looking at growth, land vehicles ending up at minus 1%, very much driven by Americas, 6% down. EMA was positive, 2%, and APAC finally minus 3%. Marine positive, 2%. So we had negative two quarters ago, positive, sorry, positive, negative, positive again. So we are hovering. around the same levels as last year and at the same time we have a pretty good order intake mobile cooling very similar to marine one percent positive but also developing nicely on or intake and then global ventures seven percent down looking at the different state channels in reality nothing remarkable no more that service market is growing and by that is becoming 30 percent of the total business why oem continues to go down slightly, ending up at 38%. Perhaps one way to comment that RVOM that used to be 49% in 2017 stands today for 18%. So again, we are getting less and less exposed to the RVOM markets. looking at the different channels positive evolution everywhere i do believe that looking at the different charts is very very clear that we see a positive trend getting now into neutral growth for for the group but and hopefully we will see also oem come into positive terms in the near future would like to stay for a couple of seconds on this slide and what you can see the the gray line is manufacturing the green line is registrations and it tells you a little bit where the different inventories look like in the different markets unfortunately the inventories on on marine are much more difficult we get production numbers but we don't get the retail numbers include both on manufacturing in the US as well as imports, and that distorts the picture a little bit. But if we go back to registrations on the RV side, we see that we suffer a major deterioration in the industry from 2022 to 2025, stabilized in the last couple of years, but not coming back to growth. At the same time, we see also that there is balance between retail and manufacturing. At the same time, we see that Europe, we saw Europe kind of postponing the drop simply because we had, as you may remember, problems with component delivery from the chassis producers to the OEM industry, which means that we still had pretty good years, 2022 and 2023. But we saw a major drop in the second half of 2024 and a major drop in 2025. And of course, when looking at genetics evolution during the last couple of years and always commenting negative growth, what you can see is we got the heat in the US first, as the US was stabilizing, then we got marine and we got as well Europe. So that has been very much the main reason for this delay in coming into neutral territory and hopefully showing growth in the quarters to come. Again, coming back to inventories, we are very much there on the AVI side. On the marine side, we still hear and read from retailers, in the US especially, that inventories are a little bit too high, while Europe looks far better. And by the way, we have seen growth on the marine side, both in Europe and APAC, during the last couple of quarters. Every day, ending up at 10.6, good progress on gross margins. It's very, very clear that the restructuring program is kicking in, showing improvements on top of all the other efficiency actions that we've taken. We have an SE&A higher than one year ago, very much, as I commented, explained by the investments that we are doing. We keep doing improved development everywhere, but especially in the mobile cooling and marine area. which are reflected not just on the product development course, but also on the marketing course in connection to the product launches. We see major improvements in land vehicles. We are on neutral levels on global ventures, and we saw decline on marine and mobile cooling. Looking at different segments, land vehicles, 1% down, with good growth in service and aftermarket, and again, decline on the wind side. very much driven by the RVWM side in Americas. Strong margin improvement, 9%, with, again, significant improvements driven by the restructuring program and all the other activities. And we continue to invest, as we have commented many times, on pro development. Innovation is clearly the driving force behind organic growth, and that's what we are working for. uh worthwhile to mention that we are still producing losses in americans but we see a major major cut on those losses during the last 12 months marine positive to see two percent growth with high single digit growth in service and aftermarket uh slight decline very very close now to neutral territory also on the oem side EBITDA margins close to 18%, and the reduction is very much driven, again, by, on one side, delays on the price increases, so time lag between price increases and the cost increases, and then, of course, all the uncertainties that we have just now with the tariff situation in the US. At the same time, as we continue to invest, as I said, in product development, leading to new product launches and marketing costs. Mobile cooling, 1%. Here we see good development on the U.S. market. We see slight deterioration on the European and APAC markets. Margins are 5.7, so deterioration versus last year. We see a little bit of the same, that we have still time lags between cost increases due to the new tariff situation and price increases. and even here we keep investing in generating growth moving forward. Lastly, global ventures organic growth 7% down with other global verticals continue to develop positively at the same time as we see mobile power solutions still negative driven by the RBOEM that business is to a high extent linked to the to the OEM business There is margins on a neutral level. On one side, we see continued margin improvements on the global verticals for the same, but we see some margin deterioration for mobile power solutions, but totally speaking, neutral, since we are also adapting our G&A costs to the new situation. Looking at sustainability, very good progress. We feel proud of what we are doing in that territory as well with injuries coming down, have been down now below one, the target of one, for a number of quarters. We see also female managers at a decent territory. We would like obviously to improve even more, but we have seen a major progress in the last couple of years. We continue to invest in renewable energy. We are in operations and we are up to 44%. Innovation, again, the major driver behind organic growth, up to 24%. So we are very, very close to our target, 25%. And then we keep doing, assessing our suppliers for that material. And we will secure that we deliver as well on our targets. Some of the recent launches, we launched at the end of Q4 a new brand, Vaiko, which is also not just a number of products, it's also a new business model where we are addressing major wholesalers, major distributors and implementing a totally different business model, generating higher margins at the same time as we are capturing volumes. It is clear that we see a new demand for all the vehicles and we are addressing that new demand that we have been seeing accelerating in the last couple of years as a consequence, again, of the inflationary cost increases post-pandemic, people are looking for lower price options and we are addressing that. Positive reaction, very positive reaction, even better than we expected during the first couple of months. Unfortunately, a little bit late since we are already now in Q1 and customers are placing orders normally in Q4 for deliveries in Q2 and we launched the product in December. But again, so far, very, very positive reaction. Moving over to Dreamwear, another of the areas where we are investing, launching the first series of premium Dreamwear products, where we are addressing also modularity and delivering a lot of accessories, not just the bottles, but also a number of different options and we are expecting on one side, good growth and good margin evolution, but we're also expecting that these kind of products will reinforce our Dometic brand globally. Moving over to a new series of rooftop tents. This is also the third series of rooftop tents coming from Dometic. addressing the new market with SUVs and pickup trucks. And as a consequence of all the product launches, we keep collecting awards in different areas. In this case, we are talking about mobile cooling with the new high quality and premium Dometic branded products, both as hard coolers and soft coolers as well. that we have been launching in the last couple of quarters and are starting to kick in as well on store. Happy to report as well, positive development on our restructuring program, the cost reduction program. You may remember this program will generate 750 million on running rates at the end of this year. We ended up Q4 last year at a running rate of 350. We added another 50 million in Q1 So new running rate 400 million and cash out in the quarter achieving 20 million. And with that, I would like to hand it over to you, Stefan.

Thank you very much, Juan. moving to the income statement starting with our gross profit margin development and this is really a very nice development that we have seen now for almost two years where we have had a continuous improvement of our of our gross margin and it ends up with 29.6 percent in the quarter versus 28.7 the equivalent period last year and that has then favorably been impacted by sales mix but also the restructuring program and then partially being offset by the fact that we have still a certain lag between price increases and cost increases, including tariffs. I mean, there has happened a lot of things in the first quarter. We have always had the decision by the Supreme Court in the US and making some of the tariffs illegal. Then we have obviously had the escalating situation down in the Middle East, which has been starting to drive up input cost for our products. On operating expenses, in reported currency, we are down, but in constant currency, we are up 5%. And there is two things to that. We obviously have effects from our global restructuring program, which is driving down the cost as expected. But then we also have in the quarter some offsets for increased product development as well as marketing related to product launches. You just saw a number of the examples here in the presentation. Looking at net financial expenses, which is on its way down as expected and driven by the gross debt reduction, which is going to continue here now in the coming quarters. Tax is on the same level as last year and the effective tax rate is 33%. which is as we have communicated before affected by deductibility of interest expenses in Sweden. Moving on to cash flow summary. As Juan already mentioned, very nice to see that the free cash flow is actually quite a bit better than the same period last year. You know that we have the seasonality where Q1 is always our weakest cash flow quarter. And now when we're moving into Q2, we are moving into the strongest one. The same with Q3 is also a very strong cash flow quarter here. But in the quarter, we have seen working capital on the one hand been impacted by higher inventory. It's of course measures to make sure that we have the inventory to fulfill the demand. And then we have seen on the other side improvements in trade receivables and payables. Mention was that the cash out related to the restructuring program in the quarter was 20 million. Program to date we have 256 million in payout and as you remember we have talked about it should be totally 400 million and we still stick to that so there is 140 million approximately to go which will happen in 2026. And then capex is a bit lower than the same period last year and we continue to prioritize investments in fixed assets. And we also have a new model which actually means that we have less needs to invest in fixed assets going forward. If we look then on interest expenses paid, they are down as well as tax paid. So that is also helping to drive the free cash flow. Moving on. uh yeah here you can see what what one was was alluding to that yeah minus 192 million in free cash flow stacks up quite well in a historical comparison here so i'm happy with uh how we continue to manage this well if we look on working capital uh the last 12 months we are down to 20 and 25 which is 3% units better than the same period last year. We are 26% in the quarter. Inventory balance, 5.2 billion in constant currency. That is then up versus last year. But as I mentioned, it's really to make sure that we can keep the service level to our customers here. So number of days, 121 days, and that's 10 days less than the same period last year. But as you can see, there is still potential to continue to drive that down towards around 100 days. On accounts payable, the movements there is very much mixed related. Where do we have the major... sourcing in the in the quarter so a little bit more china longer payment terms there inventory we already talked about and accounts receivable you see that the day's sales outstanding is starting to come down which i would also expect due to the ar program that we have been putting in place Okay, moving over to CAPEX and research and development cost. We ended up 72 million in the quarter, equivalent to 1.6% of net sales. And as I said before, we are making clear priorities, but we have also created a model where we underlying need to invest less in the machinery and equipment. the r d side uh we are now on 2.9 percent 132 million in the quarter and we are continuing to prioritize to um to invest in in product development We can also see that on our innovation index, as mentioned before, it's up to 24% now in Q1. And that is something that we will also continue to prioritize going forward. Moving on. So if we take a step over to our death maturity profile, The total gross debt is now 15 billion as of the end of Q1. We have an average maturity of 2.5 years and then we have an undrawn revolving credit facility of 300 million euro maturing in 2028. Then we will pay back the 2.2 billion in the remaining 2026 euro bond here tomorrow using cash on hand. And then we also have a plan to repay the 0.8 billion which is the private placement that we have maturing in September 2026. So with this you will see the gross debt continuing to come down and also the net debt driven by the free cash flow that we are expecting to generate during 2026. Looking at the leverage ratio, it ended at 3.4 as was mentioned before. It's all the different components that is very slightly all contributing to take it up from 3.3 as we had by the end of Q4. This is not unusual that leverage ratio is moving 0.1 in the first quarter. So from now we are going to obviously come into the cash flow strong part of the year and the leverage will then start to move down here and in Q2, Q3 especially. With that, I will hand over to you, Jean, to make the summary.

Thank you, Stefan, for summarizing. very very happy that we are leaving the negative growth behind us and that we see as well improving growth margins and everyday margins positive or intake and all the backlog that continues to develop in a positive way we see a good mix a safe mix with services of the market showing solid growth with improvements in free cash flow leverage that ended up at 3.4 versus 3.3 At the same time, as we see as well, still today, low consumer confidence, driven both by the volatility on the tariffs and nonetheless by the new upcoming situation in the Middle East. Due to that fact, we decided to withdraw the dividends, as you know, on the 12th of March. And already at the time, we communicated that the main reason was what the risk that we saw moving forward. We also commented that it was not a profit warning. Hopefully you realize as well when looking at the numbers that what we said, we are not collapsing, became the reality as well. Again, we feel good about Q1, we feel good about the oil intake and the backlog. Still, we don't know how the ongoing war in the Middle East is going to have an impact in Q2 or Q3. The theory is obviously that we are moving into Q2 in a positive manner with a stronger backlog. Then we will see what happens during these three months. We are still of the opinion that we will see organic growth in 2026. But of course, we're also very mindful of the situation in the Middle East and the impact on, again, oil prices, inflation, interest rates, and consumer confidence. No matter what, we continue to invest strategically. We see pro-development and innovation index coming up. Of course, that with that, we also have some extra marketing costs that we are kind of happy to expand since we are starting to move into a growth phase again. And we are also very pleased with the way the restructuring program is developing over time. And with that said, I think that we can move into the Q&A session.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. Please mute your line when you have asked your question and please limit yourself to only two questions. You can also write your questions on the webcast page. The next question comes from Agnieszka Wajlela from Nordia. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. So maybe just starting with the demand outlook. Mid-March you were quite cautious, Juan, about the demand prospects, especially in the light of Middle East conflict. Yet you finished Q1 with flat organic growth for the quarter and I wanted to ask, was there anything that really surprised you to the positive? And also maybe follow up on that. You have built some inventories in the quarter. Should we interpret it as a sign of you expecting higher sales in Q2?

Absolutely. So no surprises. I mean, good morning, by the way. So no surprises. Again, the communication on March 12th was much more due to what we could happen due to the war. It's very, very seldom that you see the world starting day one and then inflation, interest rates and consumers stopping to buy. You see that normally after a number of months. So I think we were very clear at the time of the communication and we tried to clarify even a couple of days after the announcement that we were not collapsing. And I think that this is what we proved this time. We are happy to see the order intake and the backlog strengthening even more in Q1. Then the question, and I think that at least our takeaway is that we take it in a very positive way at the same time as I also believe that many people in the value chain are expecting to see higher prices down the road as a consequence of the higher inflation. And since we are at the beginning of Q2, it might be that we have an effect of people forward buying so to say at the same time so you can you can take it in a negative way you can take it in a positive way nobody wants to build up inventories people are super careful on building up inventories so again we are starting the quarter if i'm coming to the second question we're starting the quarter with a stronger backlog in theory we should see growth

But we only have one month.

Yeah. Okay.

Perfect. Thank you. And then my second question is on the input costs for you. We do see some inflation, the polymer prices. So maybe if you could please remind us about your plastics exposure, maybe tell us how quickly this higher commodity prices are affecting you. Do you hedge? And what kind of price increases would you need to implement to neutralize the impact?

I mean, of course, I mean, it's not just plastics. I mean, everything is just now going up and we see also moving targets. But of course, that we have been working very, very hard during the last few weeks and we are implementing price increases as we speak. We have not seen any major effect in Q1 simply because you are sitting on inventories. But it is clear that suppliers are knocking on the door and we are already now talking to customers. So our intention is, as usual, to cover up for the potential cost increases. And the cost increases will come. It's just a question of time. Just now, obviously, the target is to push back as much as we can. at the same time as we are sitting on inventories. But at the same time, we also need to act very, very fast and start discussing with our own customers as well.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

The next question comes from Daniel Schmidt from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Stefan. Sorry if I may be repeating something that you already said that was late into the call. But I hear you in terms of order intake and order backlog heading into Q2, and what you said about your announcement on the 12th of March. Am I getting it right that for the month of March you didn't really see any deterioration? Did you have Because I assume that you did get hit by the winter storms in the U.S. in January and February, which caused some production shutdowns.

Yeah, but at the same time, I do believe that you have one side with the storms, which is totally right. At the same time, we also see that retail, especially talking about the RV industry in the U.S., we see that retail was also down. So I believe that we need to be a little bit careful in the way we are interpreting the weather impact in the first two months. I mean, again, if we were just talking about production, I would agree with you. But of course, when you see the retail, RV retail is also down, the customers are careful. Then I believe that we need to wait for some more time to understand. As you know, production was down 11%. If you look at the numbers retail in February, they were down 22%.

I'm just getting to your momentum in the quarter.

Q1 was good. March was good and backlog was even better. Our backlog strengthened in March. Good.

And then a totally different question maybe, but in the recent days there has been confirmations from both LCI and Patrick Industries that they are talking about a possible merger. Who knows if that's going to happen or not? But if that happens, do you see that theoretically at least as an opportunity for you guys in the US, especially to regain some shares while they are occupied by by a possible merger and internally focused and so on.

I think that is, of course, what you are saying will happen anyway, right? It takes a while to integrate. So there will be, if that happens, it will take some momentum from the organization. But at the same time, I would like to point out, we are competing with Lippert. Basically, we are not competing with Patrick. Patrick and Lippert are competing with each other. The only area where we are competing with Patrick is that Patrick acquired a company two years ago called RecPro, turning $80 million. So we are talking about the VMs. We are competing very, very little with them for not saying nothing. And on the aftermarket, it's very, very limited as well. So I don't see that that will change. I think it might change in the short term, as you said, because, of course, it takes lot of attention from the organization to integrate companies and we are talking about two major companies so this is not just the one absorbing the other but i don't i don't expect any major any major impact on the long term simply because we're not competing with patrick right okay good good thanks

And then maybe a very detailed question for Stefan. Other current liabilities are up a bit versus the end of the year despite currency going in the other direction. Is there anything in that number that's related to the court case or further reservations or anything?

The very simple answer to that is no.

No, okay. Good. That's all for me and I just want to thank Stefan as well for good collaborations through the years and good luck.

Thanks a lot, Daniel. I appreciate it.

The next question comes from Law Courtiade from Amundi. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. Thanks for the presentation. Perhaps you mentioned it, but I didn't get it. What do you expect as cash payout for restructuring in 2026? And yes, P&L impact versus cash impact. And same for 2027, if there is.

yeah as i mentioned before uh we have said in the past 400 million in in total uh cash payout of the program we have program today paid out 256 million so that means that we have 144 million to go for uh 20 and that is mainly it's going to come in 2026 so it's um So I don't expect there to be anything left for 2027. Then in terms of saving, as you know, the program in total should generate 750 million in savings. We should be on a run rate jumping into 2027 on 750 million. We reported now after Q1 that we are on 400 million in run rate savings. So if we overlay that with our plans, we feel that we are absolutely on track to achieve that.

Thank you.

And you could say, I could add as well, that in 2026, what is going to happen is that it's going to be a little bit more backloaded than in 2025 and the reason for that is that we have some major activities that we're working on but we will see the effects later on in the year the next question comes from frederick evasin from abg please go ahead

Thank you. Good morning, team. Most of the questions I had have been asked, but I have one on marine. And I guess when we listen to all the boat manufacturers, it's a little scattered view, I think, with the high-end manufacturers being quite optimistic and talking about higher backlogs and so forth, whereas the mass market is more more cautious. First, do you share this view? And second, how are you positioned towards this backdrop in that case?

I would agree that we saw, you go back to the last few years, first we saw what Americans called for blue-collar bolting coming down dramatically. Then it took about 18 months before we saw the bigger boats coming down quite a lot. Then we saw the low price boat in stabilizing about 18 months ago. And now we see the bigger boats moving upwards really during the last, I would say, six months. So it feels good. Oil intake has been promising at the same time as when you read all the information about American marine retailers, they're still cautious. So I simply believe that we need to wait a little bit more because we might be seeing what we saw with the RV, American RV industry a couple of years ago, that it went down, manufacturing started to build up, retail didn't come back, and then the manufacturing came down again. So we are kind of hovering about the same levels that we were manufacturing two years ago. You look at the RV industry. So I believe that we need to see these for some months before we can see now it is moving. The fact is that the oil intake has been growing. So from that perspective, we feel positive, but I would like to understand it to be more in one or two quarters.

So we see that consistency. And on top of that, we also feel that the inventory situation is still not on an optimal level by the dealers in North America, but it has certainly improved.

That's true. And then that's very much on the American market. We are looking at Europe. Europe looks good. We had high-digit positive growth in Q1 and even APAC looks good. Having said that, obviously the US market stands for 75% of the global markets. So improving. We are still not there, but it is improving, clearly.

Okay, great. And on the positioning, could you remind us of where you are?

So we are very well positioned in student systems. We are very well positioned in full systems. We are very well positioned in ACs. I would say that those are the three main categories. We have seen as well, so that's on the VM, we see the aftermarket side, We have seen very nice growth, very nice growth in Q1. We saw also growth in Q4. So after market has been showing positive numbers now for a couple of quarters. And again, from a NWM perspective, we have very strong positions. And we need to keep in mind as well that the market is much more fragmented, obviously, that we don't have, what can I say, any domestic lookalike offering to put it in some way.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Daniel Schmidt from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Yes, me again. Just two follow-ups and another detailed question I forgot last time. Stefan, you're repaying this bond tomorrow, 2.2 billion. Could you give us any indication of how much that will change your financial net on a quarterly basis going forward?

That is running with a financing cost of 3%.

And you are getting basically just 1% or 1.5% on the cash that you held. Hmm.

Yeah, sometimes a little bit more actually.

So maybe a percentage point or a little bit more maybe in a positive impact on the financial net, is that fair?

Yeah, it will. I mean, we are on 4.2, 4.3% on average cost of our portfolio right now. So this will take it up a little bit. But in absolute terms, as you are after, it will go down. And it will continue later in the year when we have the 750 million in private placement that we are planning to pay back as well.

Exactly. Okay, good. And then I guess you already touched upon it, but I missed it as I missed part of the call. Any details on the European market on the RV side? You grew in the quarter. Was that both OE and aftermarket? What was the momentum in the quarter?

We see the OEM business evolving in a positive way. Registrations across Europe were very positive, I have to say. And we see our intake as well being positive for us now for a few months. So I'm optimistic. Even the service of the market has been improving lately, absolutely. So I'm far more. If I think about different geographies, it's clear. I feel far more optimistic about the RV and the marine industries in Europe than I feel about the U.S. market. I see U.S. consumers showing much lower consumer confidence than the European ones. Europe is not flying, don't get me wrong. But again, inventories are gone. Manufacturing is starting to build up. Service and aftermarket is moving also into positive territory. Well, you see on the American market that inventories are relatively low, but retail is still negative as a consequence of consumers entering the stores, but not pushing the button. And as far as that doesn't happen, of course, it will be slow movements.

Yeah, thank you. Good color. That's all for me. Thank you.

Thank you, Daniel.

The next question comes from Agnieszka Wajlela from Nordia. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I have two follow-ups. Maybe starting with your SG&A development. I mean, you have quite good progress on the grass margin, but now with the SG&A cost being higher, much of that benefit is kind of disappearing or fading away a bit at least. But could you just tell us about your investments in marketing and product development and I mean, it's all for good reasons, but how would you evaluate the success of your initiatives there? How much this new product should add to your growth? And also, should we expect this kind of cost to be elevated for the coming quarters?

I believe that we will see that cost, especially in those two segments, being higher for another one or two quarters, and then they will be coming down. But at the same time, as I said, we have been investing quite a bit on product development. We believe that it's super important. We have been preparing ourselves for a growth phase. And to develop the products, if you are not launching, doesn't give you a lot. At the same time, as you know, Agnieszka, we are trying to reinforce the B2C side. The B2C side, from a marketing perspective, is simply higher cost. At the same time, it's also bringing higher margins. So I believe that you need to see the combination gross margins and SG&A. Hopefully we will be showing positive balance moving forward.

Thank you. And then my second follow-up is on the marine business. You grew organically by 2% in the quarter, but the operational leverage was quite low with EBITDA still falling 17%. So can you just remind us what was the driver behind the lower earnings and how should we think going forward about this earnings progression in marine?

Well, the main issue in the marine business is obviously that we are producing in Canada. We have a situation where tariffs, as you know, things are changing rapidly. on continuous basis and at the same time you have also some time lag between the cost increases and what we are provisioning on tariffs and potential tariffs and the price increases that we are applying. So it's very much a time lag. We should expect that to improve moving forward.

And could you just quantify the tariffs you're paying on the marine side ballpark?

I don't have that number on top of my mind. We don't have that available right now, but I mean it's obviously it's, I mean, we, we obviously know, uh, what we are, what we are paying, but it's, you know, with what has happened now in the, in the first quarter where the Supreme court were declaring some of them, uh, uh, you know, not, uh, not appropriate. Um, so obviously impacting the dialogue somewhat, uh, with some of the customers. So, so it's, um, It is a challenging environment to operate in, in terms of this, where things are changing very, very frequently.

And it is a challenge because no customer, I mean, that's also valid for us when we are the customer. I mean, you get crazy when you get new price list every second month. But that's the reality that you need to play just now, right? So we implemented new prices as late as one month ago that we are not seeing, obviously, the effects on the marine side.

Understood. Thank you.

So we have clearly, Agnieszka, you are totally right. We have a time lag in the marine side between the tariff situation and the price increases. Again, as late as one month ago, we applied new price.

Plus what we talked about before in SG&A investment, especially in product development. Absolutely.

Thank you.

You're welcome. We have a few questions from the webcast audience that we can take now then. And the first one relates to the backlog. How did we see it change during the quarter and then what's the typical maturity in the backlog?

so good progress in january flatish in february better in march again and normally our backlog we are not an industrial right so our backlog is somewhere four to six weeks so we are starting the quarter two in a stronger situation that we were starting q1 but again we cannot take any conclusions on how may or june will look like the starting point is positive

Thank you. Then there's a question on leverage. Do you stick to the target of 2.5? And how should we see what's the fair expectation of the leverage evolving towards this 2.5?

I can absolutely confirm that we stick to the target of around 2.5. We are now coming into two strong cash flow quarters here. So my expectations are that we are going to move towards three and potentially even slightly below, but I don't foresee that we are going to achieve the around 2.5 during 2026.

And finally, a question on capex. There was a mention of lower capex need going forward. Can you please elaborate on that?

I mean, as we have been running the different kind of restructuring programs. We obviously have created something where we have been outsourcing to a higher degree than what we have done before. So that is one driver. And then just by the fact that we have fewer factories as we have been closing factories during these programs, we have gone from 31 factories down to 22 now. So it's obviously also reducing the need for CapEx in machinery and equipment.

And it's a logical consequence. I mean, it's not been very much on purpose since we introduced the new strategy. We wanted to have a similar level of capex, but the profile of the capex was going to change by investing less in factories and maintaining factories, investing less in machinery, but investing more in tooling in connection to innovation. So that's an important one.

Good, that's it from WebCorp's audience then. So back to the operator, please.

The next question comes from Andreas Lundberg from SEB. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you, Andreas, with SCB here. Back to the leverage question, you're targeting 2.5 times, you say, how comfortable are you with that, given the cyclicality of the business? Wouldn't you consider even a lower level would be more suitable?

I mean the target is expressed around 2.5 right so it in certain times it could be you know below 2.5 in some other situations it could be on 2.5 or even slightly above so depending on where we are in the cycle I can agree with your comment. Typically, historically, we have been leveraging somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.6 times per year. Now when things are starting to, yeah, it's maybe difficult to talk about normalization, but a little bit more stable, I would still say that we still have that deleveraging potential in our model.

And I think things also change over time. We keep in mind that we move from two around two and a half at the time when the market was growing when everybody was asking the metric guys isn't this the moment to grow additionally by acquisitions so the market turned very very sour we have been fighting super hard to come down to around two and a half and once we are approaching to two and a half then we will discuss whether it is the right target or not but just now we are so far away from two and a half So we have a clear target to reach around two and a half. So I think it's super important from our side, we understand the situation, we are working extremely hard. And again, things, financial targets change over time, but this is not a time to discuss a change. This is a time to get into the financial target.

Thank you. Earlier, I think it was a year ago, we talked about potential divestments or exits in certain categories. Where do you stand today or where does your thinking stay today?

The same, working, but the market has not been very, very positive for divestments either. So it's clear that we have been talking, we have been out to the market with a couple of assets and we have been very, very close to completing one of the deals. And then we have the famous liberation day and then things change overnight. the willingness of potential buyers to invest at that moment change. So we are working very, very hard and hopefully as the market stabilizes, it's going to be a little bit easier to divest those assets. So we continue to work on that. But again, the environment has not been the appropriate for money.

And I also think worthwhile to mentioning here is that for these to make full sense I mean there is this protected assessment of course but that it should also make financial sense I mean we need to get a certain valuation and it's not the higher saying in itself so that's obviously a part okay and then lastly on the cost saving side what what remains so what kind of cost savings remain

But we have a number of projects that are just now ongoing. As you may understand, these kind of decisions are very, very sensitive. You don't want to communicate before you are ready to communicate. But that's why I commented earlier today that they are going to be back loaded. We are working just now on the preparations, making sure that everything is going to work out. and we will communicate the different steps as they are happening in connection to these quarterly reports. But you don't want to get it uncertain unnecessarily.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. You are welcome.

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

Thank you very much, all of you, for attending the call and for showing interest in how Dometic is evolving. And I would also like to take the opportunity to thank Stefan for these years. It has been a tough environment. I believe that you have contributed in a great way to our development, even if the times have been very, very tough. So thank you very much and all the best in the future.

Thank you very much for these kind words.

And for all of you, thank you and hopefully we see you soon. Bye. Bye-bye.