Essity AB (publ)

Good morning and welcome to Essity's presentation of the Q1 2026 results. Here to take us through the highlights of the quarter, we have our CEO Ulrika Kolsrud and our CFO Fredrik Rystedt. After their presentation, you have the opportunity to engage directly with us. To ask a question, please press star one. And I kindly remind you to just ask one question per call. Now, enough of me. Let's get started. Ulrika, please, take us through the quarter.

Thank you, Sandra. And also from my side, welcome to this webcast. We started the year with organic sales growth coming from volume growth, and we continued to win the relative game, strengthening market shares in our branded business in retail. We furthermore strengthened our profit margins and delivered a strong cash flow. Then besides these solid results, we had three major events in the quarter. The decision to launch a new share buyback program of 3 billion SEK, well in line with our ambition to have share buybacks as a reoccurring part of our capital allocation. We also completed our feminine care acquisition in North America, now more than doubling our personal care sales in the US. And we have the organizational change, meaning that we now report in our four new business units, health and medical, personal care, consumer tissue and professional hygiene. And let's start with health and medical, where we continued on our track record of consecutive growth in medical solutions. We were especially pleased in the quarter with the continued good growth in wound care across geographies. Q1 was, however, a weaker sales quarter for incontinence care in healthcare. Given the financial pressure that we see in healthcare systems and also the lower input costs that we have had, we held on to prices very well. So margins and profit delivery was as high as ever. However, the sales performance was different from market to market. And one region that performed very well in the quarter was North America. And we also supported the business going forward to grow even further in North America by upgrading the Tena ProSkin brief assortment. We now equip this with our latest and greatest technology when it comes to, or technologies I would say, when it comes to leakage security, dryness, fit and comfort. And we know that these products are highly preferred among professional caregivers. We also performed very well in incontinence care in North America in our retail channel. And actually the good growth momentum and continued good growth momentum of incontinence care in retail was one of the key highlights in our personal care results. Two other key highlights were that we strengthened our share of markets in 60% of our branded business and also the good growth in feminine care. I want to stay for a while on feminine care because we had some exciting developments in this category in the quarter. For one thing, as I mentioned, we completed the acquisition of OB, Playtex, Carefree and Stayfree in North America. Now we start the integration and it's now that the real work is starting. So our first priority is to secure business continuity, to guarantee that we have uninterrupted customer execution, supply and operations during this transition period. Our second priority is to engage in top-to-top customer meetings, to now present the combined portfolio that we have and that we can offer from SCT. And then in parallel with this, we continue to work on supply chain, on branding and on innovation. So to capture synergies in supply chain, to combine the two innovation portfolios, to accelerate proven platforms and to apply our proven S&T brand building capabilities and assets in a globally scaled and locally relevant way. The other event, I would say, or exciting development in the quarter in feminine care was in our leakproof apparel. So as you can see here behind me on the slide, leakproof apparel was contributing positively to the growth in feminine care. And this is one fast-growing segment within feminine care, and we have taken action to make sure that we capture the growth in this segment. So we have, for example, reduced our production and product costs in order to enable a competitive pricing in a more challenging consumer environment. We have also improved our efficiency in consumer acquisition in the D2C channel and broadened our distribution. Then with the new organization that we have put in place, we are consolidating our efforts to make sure that we drive learnings and synergies for our full portfolio in this area. Now, innovation is as important for leak-proof apparel as it is for all our other categories and segments. And in the quarter, we upgraded with a specific range for teens. And this is a super important target group for this segment and for feminine care in general, because this is where we generate trial and capture consumers at the point of market entry. And these products are then specifically or tailored to the teen body. Also, they come with a day and a night variant and they come with a smart protect concept. And some of you might remember that I talked about smart protect technology last quarter and that we equipped our Saba Nosortras disposable feminine pads with this technology. Now we are reapplying this concept onto also leak-proof apparel, which I think is a good example of how we can reapply strong concepts. Of course, with the technical solutions that is fit for purpose. That now secures that we have instant absorption and a good spreading of the liquid in the product. Continuing on innovation, we also launched an upgraded Libro offer in the quarter. More precisely, we made our soft Libro Touch product even softer. And we know that this is highly appreciated by parents who really want soft products for the soft and delicate skin of their babies. So we have high reasons to believe that this will continue to support the very good momentum that we already have in this business. Because Libro had, again, a very strong quarter. We strengthened market shares and we increased volumes. When it comes to our retailer brand business in Baby, however, it was weaker. So overall for Baby, we had a slight decline of organic sales. The other category where we were declining organic sales in the quarter was in consumer tissue. And that is the result of lower volumes and lower sales prices in Europe specifically. Latin America was doing good. Also, the good news is that we continue to perform very well in our branded business in consumer tissue, gaining market shares and growing volumes. And we will continue to support that profitable growth in our branded business of consumer tissue. And by also continuing with our innovation agenda. In the quarter, we launched SEVA VisionVecSmart. And what that is, is that we are reapplying our coreless technology onto household towels as well. So now we will have less waste in the kitchen moving forward. This is first and foremost, of course, to bring convenience to our consumers. But it's also an innovation that is supporting our sustainability agenda. And that brings me to another initiative on our sustainability agenda in the quarter. Because in the quarter, we inaugurated a new biomass boiler in a Kunheim factory in France. This is the second one. We have one in Latté since before. And I think this is a very good example of how we translate our net zero ambition into tangible industrial execution at the site level. And with this spoiler, we are then covering for 70% of the steam needs at the plant. We are more than half our natural gas dependency in that plant and reducing carbon footprint by 40% or more than 40% in the paper machine. And this is also highly appreciated by our customers, which we could see also because we had a customer joining us in the inauguration. And in these times, I think it's worthwhile to mention that this is not only about sustainability. By reducing our dependency on natural gas, of course, we also become more long-term cost resilient. Last, but certainly not least, let's turn to professional hygiene. I have talked the past quarters about our strong development in strategic segments, that we grow very nicely in strategic segments, which is important for us. And we continue with this positive development also in this quarter. A good example of that is that we grew Torque Pixar more than 10%. We also grew Torque Skincare 5%. This quarter, we reported volume growth for the total professional hygiene as well. And that shows that the activities that we have put in place in order to fuel volume growth are starting to pay off. That's not the least true in North America, where we have gained some contracts in the fast food channel, but also work more expansive in the other channels beyond Horeca. Then we were helped a bit by a stabilized market also in North America. And now to talk about the financial performance of Professional Hygiene and our other three business units, I hand over to Fredrik. Over to you.

Thank you, Ulrika. I will do my best to do exactly that. And I will start with our sales. And as you can see on the slide, we declined our sales with 5.1 percent. And this is, of course, just due to currency translation on the back of a stronger Swedish krona. In constant currency or using the same currency rate, we increased our sales with about half a billion or 1.5%. And as you can see on the slide or this bridge, 1.1% of that comes from the acquisition of the feminine care business in North America. And the other 0.4% is related to women. to organic sales growth. Now, just to comment a little bit, it's really a bit premature, perhaps, to comment on the feminine care business from a financial standpoint. It's included as of February 2nd, so we've had very short experience from owning it. But so far, if you look at the full quarter, so to speak, also the period that we didn't own it, sales was roughly about comparable in comparison to last year. So, so far, as expected, pretty much. Now, if I turn to volume, then... you can see that we grew here with 1.1%. And we were particularly happy, actually, to see professional hygiene growing with close to 2% of 1.9%. And this is of quite a number of quarters with negative volume development for professional hygiene. This has been on the back of deliberate restructuring, but it's also been challenging markets. And as Ulrika mentioned, we see a bit of improvement in... in actually Southern Europe and North America on the market side. But we also see some some good results of the initiatives. So, again, a good development and personal care with three and a half percent volume growth coming from a very strong or I should say yet another very strong Growth quarter for incontinence, good for feminine. And in fact, if you remember perhaps the previous few quarters that we've had relating to baby, where you see 45% of volume decline for baby, we have a much, much better situation this quarter with about 1% volume decline for that specific category. Now, this is much better than before, and it's on the back of good performance in pregnancy. in the northern part or our branded part in the Nordics, was the rest of the business pretty much performed in line with the market. So a better situation for baby in general. When it comes to... Then to consumer tissue, finally, we had a slight volume decline, so minus roughly about half a percent. And this is, of course, just mainly coming from the non-branded business, whilst, as Ulrika mentioned earlier, the branded business actually performed super well, both from a market share perspective, but also positive volume growth. Turning to price mix, this is all, or I should say, mainly coming from consumer tissue, where we have deliberately lowered prices on the back of lower COGS. We also have, and we reported on that before, we have selectively lowered some prices for certain SKUs in professional hygiene to get more products. growth in that area. But if you look at the combined price mix for professional hygiene, it is actually slightly positive because we have a continued strong growth in our strategic products. So mix is actually bigger than the price decline. I'll go there from sales. I'll go to our margin development. And it's clear we have increased our margin with roughly 40 basis points. And all of our business areas, with the exception of consumer tissue, strengthen the margin or at least about the same margin. So a good development pretty much across the group. You can see here that there is a negative contribution margin-wise from the feminine acquisition. And if you look at that negative contribution for the group, it's roughly about 10 basis points and bigger for personal care. So if you look at the personal care margin, it has an impact of minus 70 basis points. Now, We have, if you look at the feminine business in North America that we acquired, it has a positive operating margin, but it's very low as expected. And the low margin has to do with, of course, transition costs plus service agreements that we have. And over the next 12 months, we are gradually going to take over transition. both administration, sales and all of the other things, and gradually, of course, also improved profits. So very much with the feminine acquisition as expected. Now, turning to gross profit, you can see that this is the source, basically, of our increase or our improved margin with 60 basis points. I already talked about volume price mix. So, of course, that contributes positively. But a lot of the improvement comes from overall lower COGS. And this is mainly related to currency, actually, FX or positive currency impacts. But we also have good savings. So typically, savings in COGS is quite low during the first quarter. And this quarter, we have 130 million roughly in savings. So we're quite pleased with that number. So overall, 60 basis points in improved margin. We have talked a lot about investing more into growth. And of course, part of that exercise is more investments into A&P. And as you can see, we continue to invest more both from an absolute perspective, but actually also as percentage of sales. And we compensated that partly with lower SG&A. So very much in line with our plans. Now, you may think that this is possibly a consequence of our cost savings program. That's not the case. As we have reported earlier, pretty much all of those savings will appear late in the year. So more towards the third and fourth quarter and full run rate as we have talked about at the end of the year. So savings is not really compensating so much at this point. This is other types of efficiency gains like low travel, like similar types of actions. So all in all, this was the increase of the 40 basis points. points now let me just take as a final remark on when it comes to margin let me just give you a bit of an outlook for for q2 it's always we are in an uncertain environment and of course on the back of the geopolitical situation we do expect cogs to be higher if we look at the q2 of 26 versus q2 of 25 so higher cogs we also expect higher sgna and this is partly or this is all of it i should say due to Salary, just common salary inflation and a bit of higher IT cost. We will have a little bit of savings in compensating for that from the cost saving program. But as I said, it will be small also in in Q2. Good. So turning then to the cash flow. So seasonally quite strong. Four point four billion. And if we look at our our net cash flow or I should say cash flow after finance net and taxes, three billion. So it was good start to the year from a cash flow perspective and with a reasonable, I should say, working capital growth. We still think we got more mileage, to put it that way, in our working capital performance, but we were reasonably okay, I think, in the first quarter. And as partly as a consequence of that, we continue to strengthen our balance sheet even further. Now, you might have expected our balance sheet to, or net debt, I should say, perhaps to increase a little bit since we did actually acquire the Edgewell feminine business in the quarter. And so that was, of course, a negative drain in terms of debt with approximately about three billion. And that was fully compensated by the cash flow. But we also had a couple of other things like share buybacks of six hundred million and some some currency impact. But we also had one thing that was quite quite special for the quarter, which was a reduction of our debt in our pension liabilities of a bit over 3 billion. So that contributed quite a lot to that lower net debt. And all in all, as you can see, the net debt is now 24.5%. with a net debt EBITDA ratio of 0.96 or 1.0, as it says on this slide. Finally, and Ulrika has already mentioned it, so let me just give the technical details around the share buyback program, 3 billion, and it will start May 11th, 2026, and it will go on up. until the most 2027, the AGM. And you have said it, the ambition is to continue sharebacks, buybacks as a recurring part of our capital allocation. And with those words, I'll leave over to you.

Thank you, Fredrik. And to summarize the quarter, then we delivered volume growth. We strengthened our market shares. We strengthened our profit margins. We completed our M&A. We also strengthened our balance sheet and launched or decided on a new share buyback program. Then moving forward, we will continue our efforts to accelerate profitable growth. And important focus for us is to continue to grow market shares supported by innovation. And when we talk innovation, it's both about raising the bar and improving differentiation in our premium assortments, as well as to secure that we are competitive across the different price tiers. And we are steering our innovation agenda accordingly. Then, of course, we continue to execute our SG&A cost-saving program in order to be able to reinvest in growth initiatives. And we also continue to drive savings in COGS. Now, of course, looking at the situation now that we have that Fredrik talked about, that we expect to have some higher costs in the coming quarter, starting with fuel and energy. we have to rebalance our pricing. As you heard from Fredrik, we have had now selective price adjustments. We are adapting to a lower input cost, but also then to fuel growth. And needless to say, that has to be rebalanced as we move forward. So we will, as we always do, compensate cost increases with price increases over time. Then the other priority that we have that we have talked about here is also then to integrate our acquisition. And we have the ambition to do this as fast as possible. So full speed ahead. Or you could also say off to the moon. And actually in the quarter, we were on the backside of the moon with parts of our portfolio, namely the jobs, the compression therapy. We have a long-standing contract as an official supplier of compression therapy garments with NASA. And the fact that astronauts are relying on JOBST, I think it really underscores SET's expertise in compression garments, and that we have a good performance also under very challenging conditions. So as the fantastic Artemis II crew ventured around the mood and really pushed boundaries for what's possible, we at Essity are very proud to be a small but meaningful part of journeys like this, helping people to perform at their very best on Earth and beyond.

Thank you, Ulrika. Thank you, Fredrik. Interesting. Great products off to the moon. Now we are ready to take your questions. To ask a question, please press star one. And we have a good lineup of questions already. Are you ready to start to open up for questions? We are. Perfect. Our first question comes from Aaron Adamski from Goldman Sachs. Good morning, Aaron.

Good morning. Hi, Ulrika, Fredrik, Sandra. Thank you for taking my questions. I was keen to hear your thoughts on margins. I think consensus currently projects about 13.8% EBITDA margin for 2026, which would be probably similar to what you have done in Q1. But as you said during the presentation, COGS was still a tailwind in this quarter. So given the acceleration we've seen in pulp, I think some petrochemicals have also moved higher and also the FX backdrop. Do you feel comfortable with that market expectation? And then the second question, very brief on finance costs, which were lower than expected. How should we think about the level of these expenses for the remainder of the year? Thank you.

I look at Fredrik.

Yeah, I mean, Aaron, thanks for the questions. First of all... First of all, if you look at the margin outlook, as you very well know, we just don't give that. We can only refer to, of course, our long-term financial target when it comes to margins of more than 15%. So over the longer term, of course, our... Margin aspirations is quite clearly spelled out. When you look at the short term, of course, it's always more tricky to talk about, and we just don't give that forecast. Generally, we strive, of course, to continue to improve. The geopolitical situation, as Ulrika very clearly explained, is a bit tricky, and, of course, exactly how that will play out is difficult to say. So I can't really... We can't really give much more. I don't know if you want to add something, though. And then when it comes to finance net, they were a little bit lower. You should actually expect lower costs as we as we go forward on the back of net debt. But we also see actually a bit higher interest rates. So if anything, more stable and slightly higher if you go forward.

Thank you. Perfect. That's very clear. Can I just ask a very quick follow up? Related to the delay, is there any sort of time lag effect that we should consider between your cogs stepping up in Q2 versus Q1? And then are you able to surcharge that immediately onto customers? Or is there a little bit of a lag effect like we've seen in the past? Thank you.

If I start, I mean, there are different cost elements that have a different lag effect. So if you take the oil-based raw materials, that has a lag effect of four to five months before it is shown up in our P&L. And you have everything in between there. And we have already in, for example, in Latin America, we have already raised prices. And in some parts in Europe, we have also announced price increases. And in some parts, we are working on finding the best way now to make sure that we continue to fuel volume growth while we compensate for cost increases to come. So we are doing all of these different elements.

Very good. Thank you.

Thank you, Aaron, for your questions. Let's move to the next caller. Niklas Ekman, DNB Carnegie. Hi, Niklas.

Hello, good morning. Can I ask about volumes? Very strong in this quarter after, as you said, there's been a couple of quarters with flat or declining volumes. Was there any impact of facing in this quarter? Either is relating to the weak Q4, if there's been any pre-buying ahead of Q2 that's impacted that number?

Not that we are aware of, no. No pre-buying.

Okay, very good. And just following up, when I look at the input costs, I have pulp prices for your grades up more than 20% in the last six months. Oil is up almost 50% in the last couple of weeks. Energy costs up almost 20%. Do you recognize these figures and how worried are we? I assume that this will not be so much an impact for Q2, but... far more so for H2. And just wondering, given the kind of weak consumer environment we've seen in the last few quarters, how able or how receptive the market is to price hikes? If you could elaborate a little bit on this, thanks.

Maybe you start with the first part and I answer the second.

Yeah, I'll be happy to try. I mean, it's exactly as you say. If you look at the numbers you were quoting there, they're observable market numbers. So from that perspective, you're right. And of course, we also know that these things tend to change every day. So I can't really have a view on what the numbers will be eventually. We talked about the lag impact. So exactly to your point, there's not going to be... everything in the books of the second quarter, it will be more in the third and the fourth quarter. So that's the point. When it comes to the ability to price, let me just say, repeat maybe, and then I'll leave it to you, Ulrika, that we always compensate. And you know that, Niklas. We always compensate in the longer run because the price elasticity from a consumer standpoint of what we do is quite low. So, of course, our products are needed. But but again, of course, there is a time lag.

But but I guess that is exactly it. And I think we have proven in previous situations that we have pricing power. And that is, of course, important when we. when we move into this type of situation. And again, I talk a lot about innovations, but there is a reason for that. And it's not only about driving growth. It's also about securing our pricing power moving forward. So to have strong assortments gives us a good foundation for being price agile. So otherwise, it's exactly as Fredrik says.

And just a quick follow-up there, because I note that in the last two and a half, three years, your margins have been a lot more stable compared to what they were, say, four or five years ago, when there was significant margin volatility. Is this, at least to some extent, a reflection of you pushing forward cost increases more quickly than you have in the past, or are there other dynamics behind the more stable margin?

Well, maybe starting with mentioning three of them. One is that we have become more agile in our pricing. So we have a higher operational flexibility and therefore we have worked really with making sure that we can compensate with price as quickly as possible. And we've done that both in, for example, consumer tissue as well as in health and medical, where we have a more regulated environment with longer contracts. So we've increased our agility across the different business units when it comes to pricing. Then secondly, we have reduced our volatility by reducing our exposure to changes in pulp cost and energy by, for example, divesting Vinda that we did now a few years ago. a few years ago or a year ago. So that is two things. And then thirdly, I would come back to this with superiority and how important innovation is. As we talked about last quarter, we had record high levels of superiority and we are continuously strengthening our assortment and that helps then the pricing power as well.

Very clear. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thank you, Niklas. Let's move to Johannes Grunzelius at SBP Markets. Hi, Johannes.

Good morning. It's Johannes here. Yes, I have a question on... On your attempts to hike prices, you said you've been successful in Latin America. You're now announcing in Europe. Can you elaborate a bit on what type of price hike? We are talking about the magnitude and which products. Is it like across the board? So to give some color on that would be very helpful. Thanks.

The color that I can give on that is that it looks very different depending both on assortment, business unit, as well as geography that we're talking about. But overall, as you probably know, we are fastest in compensating with prices in our consumer tissue business. So that is also where we have... where we have materialized or have announced price increases at this point in time. Whereas, as I mentioned, in the more regulated area, it takes a bit longer time. So there are other mechanisms, so to speak.

Yeah. So the magnitude in the product categories where you hike prices the most, can you just give an indication what magnitude we're talking about?

We don't do that, Johannes, for commercial reasons, as I'm sure you appreciate. But as we have discussed many times, we will adjust as much as it takes to restore profitability. And we've always done that. So this is not just something we say. I think we have actually showed that in various forums yesterday. that over time we have always compensated. So we are able to do that with the pricing power. This is, of course, not just us. This is the sectors we're in, if you like. But, of course, particularly for us, this has been a reality. So we will do it this time as well. And, of course, giving you an exact number is incredibly difficult, given not least that things do change. We just don't know exactly what kind of impacts we will face in the next few quarters. So it's very much about kind of doing as much as is relevant, so to speak. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks for your question, Johannes. Next up is Oskar Lindström, Danske Bank. Please, Oskar.

Yes, thank you. Very good to hear about the price increases already being announced and in some cases already pushed through. I wanted to ask you about volume growth. in this quarter and the outlook for next quarter. We saw that it was, to a large extent, driven by the personal care business area. Is there any reason why we should expect this not to continue going into Q2? Was there some one-off effect or that you had a special push in this quarter that's not going to be repeated in Q2 or in coming quarters? Thank you.

The short answer is no. I mean, this was the result of our continuous efforts and operations.

Excellent. I'm going to stick to my one question. That's fine. Thank you.

Sorry for giving you such a short answer on that one question.

Thanks for that, Oscar. Then we will move to Charles Eden from UBS. Good morning, Charles.

Hi. Morning, Sandra. Morning, Alicia. Morning, Frederick. So just a couple of things for me on the raw materials, please. Firstly, can you just remind us the sensitivity for, for example, when we look at, say, propylene for watching super absorbance or polypropylene for nonwoven? Clearly, there's a sensitivity that means that what you're paying is not the same magnitude of moves we're seeing in those two derivatives. Could you just remind us those, please? And then just secondly, in terms of hedging, just remind us in terms of policy on energy and the raw material hedging that you've got in place for both Q2 and then I guess for the rest of 26. Thank you.

Yeah.

I look at you.

Right. Yeah. I'm not sure how to answer your question. Let me just say that if you look at our operating expenses, Charles, it's about 120 billion, just to kind of use a number. And of that, if you look at the plastic products, which I believe that was what you were asking, it's about a bit over 10 percent. So you get approximately the sensitivity there. Now, I mean, oil-based products or plastics is, of course, sensitive to oil, but not fully because you've got processing costs. So if you actually try and make some sort of estimate as to what happens to the oil... or plastic products, the cost of that, depending on what happens to oil, a rule of thumb is that roughly about 2.5%, or a bit less actually, a bit over 2%, you can say, of the oil price actually flows through to the plastic products. So this gives you a rule of thumb. But, of course, it's not an exact science because if you have a sharp spike, as an example, in some of these raw materials like oil, then, of course, the impact will be very, very little. If you have a prolonged period, then gradually costs of plastic products will also go up. So it's a bit difficult to give you an exact answer to your question, Charles. More than that.

And on energy.

In energy and maybe also raw material, I think you asked. And if you look at the hedging, if you look at the rest of the years, about 60 percent were hedged and the rest is open to spot price movement. We typically don't hedge really raw material other than energy. than energy. So we're openly exposed to pulp and to plastic materials or other types of input cost. And of course, there is a, you can say, implicit hedge through the lag impact that we talked earlier. But there are no physical hedging of any kind of any raw materials. So energy, that's where we hedge.

Thanks. Yeah, that's helpful. And I appreciate this may be a question for your procurement team more than the new, but I guess given the volatility and we don't know quite how long or the severity of the fluctuations in oil and respect to derivatives, but is it fair that I guess it's in no one's interest for prices to shoot up 40, down 40, up 40. Is there a sort of degree of smoothing of this price with your suppliers? Or really, is it sort of you take what you see in terms of the price done off? I'm just trying to understand the dynamics of how this works in real world rather than perhaps behind a spreadsheet. Thanks.

Maybe, Fredrik, you can talk to that later. But one thing is that we have, of course, different tools when it comes to our pricing as well. I mean, there is everything from surcharges to lowering our promotional efforts to having list price changes. and other tools as well. So it's also about using our toolbox when it comes to pricing in a smart way in order to, exactly as you say, to not raise prices permanently when that might not be what is the right thing to do in order to balance volume and margin in a good way. So there we have a lot of tools in our toolbox.

Yeah, I don't have anything to add. I think your question was also relating to if we make arrangements with our suppliers as to smoothing of the price. And I think that's generally not the case. But to be fair, I actually don't really know exactly that. Can't give you an exact answer there. I can check that for you, Charles.

That's perfect. Thanks both. Speak tomorrow.

Thank you, Charles. We appreciate your questions. To ask a question, please press star one. Now we have a question from Diana Gomez from Bloomberg. Good morning, Diana.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just, I believe, a follow-up from Charles' question. I'm not sure if I understood correctly in terms of the arrangements with suppliers on your comment. For the pulp and other raw materials that you are not edging, for instance, I'm assuming there are some type of fixed contracts that you would have with your suppliers. Could you give us some more color in terms of the time length of those, for instance? And related to that, There are reports of some potential concerns or constraints on supply of materials such as plastic packaging. Are you seeing any pressure on that side already? Thank you.

When it comes to contracts, as Fredrik said, we do not really talk about the details of our contracts. I would say we don't necessarily have all the details of it, but also it's for commercial reasons. Then when it comes to supply, we have so far not seen, we've not had any disruptions and we have not had any indications of disruptions either or shortages either at this point in time. But of course, it's something that we follow very closely.

Thank you. And if I could squeeze just one follow-up on the cost savings. You pointed to the fact that it was higher in the first quarter than typically is. Should we see that as a more structural change in terms of the phasing of the cost savings through the year? And it seems that there could be some sequential impact from that when we come into the second quarter with less of a buffer from the cost savings. So just to understand a little bit more on the margin impact as we go through the year.

Yeah, thanks, Diana. No, you shouldn't interpret it in that way. We have given an outlook for the year. And we're talking about just be super clear now on the productivity or COGS savings. So not the SG&A savings, but COGS savings. My comments were relating to that. And I mentioned that we had in the first quarter savings of 130 million. Typically, we have a bit of lower savings. cost savings in the first quarter. And of course, so we felt good with that number. This is not a change to our outlook for the year, which is in the range of 500 million SEC to 1 billion for the full year. So again, a good start and in our outlook for the year or our estimates or aspirations for the year of 502 billion remains.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thanks, Diana, for your questions. Now we have a new question from Aaron Adamski. Hi, Aaron.

Hello. Thanks for taking my follow up. I was just wondering, you mentioned the leverage was lower than we all expected. And so in the context of your balance sheet being quite healthy, I was wondering how do you assess the current M&A landscape out there in your priority categories? And are there any interesting assets that you're currently in the process of looking at? And should we expect any bought-on acquisitions being announced over the next 12 months or so? Thank you.

Well, we always have a very active M&A agenda. So we continuously look for opportunities and assess opportunities. And that we continue to do. And our priorities when it comes to acquisitions is seen in the areas that we've talked about before. Incontinence care, wound care, feminine care and strategic segments in professional hygiene. And I think the acquisition that we now completed in the quarter is a very good example of being an acquisition in feminine care also in an attractive geography in North America. So that work continues. And as you say, we have a strong balance sheet. So we have the opportunity to, of course, act on M&As when they are value creating.

Thank you.

Thank you, Erin. We will move to Michel Bananski from BNP Paribas. Good morning, Michel.

Morning. Thank you. One question from me, please. I wanted to ask about volumes. I know you don't guide as such, but if I were to think directionally, are there any factors in the comp that you would call out for Q2 and the remainder of the year? And also, would you say it is fair to start factoring in some negative elasticities as you start taking pricing actions? Thank you.

No specific factors. And of course, our ambition is to compensate with the cost increases, with price increases while fueling volume growth. So that is our clear ambition. That's what we work for.

Perfect. Are you happy with that answer or do you have a follow up question to that?

I don't have a question. Thank you.

OK, perfect. Thank you, Michelle. Then if you would like to ask a question, let's press star one. I think that we have actually answered all the questions now. Let's give you a few seconds to ask questions if you like. But I think we're done with questions. Thanks a lot for your questions. Then before we end, I would like to hand back over to you, Ulrike, for closing remarks.

Yes. Well, thank you all for joining this webcast and for a lot of questions here. And again, we start the year with volume growth, with strengthened profit margins and not the least with winning the relative game with strengthening our market shares, which is very important. And our work, as you saw here in short term priorities, it's about continuing to accelerate profitable growth. through our different initiatives that we have. Now we talked more about the near-term priorities in this call. I hope that you want to hear about our mid- and long-term priorities and initiatives as well. And to do so, please join us in our Capital Market Day on the 7th of May in Gothenburg. Looking forward to seeing you there.