2/13/2026

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q4 2025 conference call. Our CFO, Peter Deli, and I, Gavin O'Dowd, will take you through our results. Starting at slide four, I would like to focus on four key aspects of our operational highlights, beginning first with our nicotine pouch Q4 volume, year-on-year growth of 28%. Nicotine pouches now accounts for over two thirds of our volume. Strong acceleration in the US supported by the return of zinc and strong acceleration in the UK were important drivers. Our growth segment now accounts for over 40% of our nicotine pouch volumes. Secondly, net sales grew 19% for the period at constant rates. despite continued decline in traditional snus. Third, gross margin percentage reached 17.4% for the quarter and gross margin amount rose by 29% in 2025 versus 2024. And lastly, we completed our infrastructure overhaul in December and we can already see rapid deployment of features in January which are valued by the consumer. Moving to the next slide in slide five. The growth in sales was underpinned by robust growth in nicotine patch active consumers, which in turn is being driven by both an acceleration in new consumers and continued improvement in our robust retention rates, reflecting record high consumer satisfaction rates. Moving to the US, I would like to cover and our performance. starting with the US environment on slide six. Category growth remains strong with circa 35% increase in volume during Q4 of an already sizable base. The FDA's pilot program to accelerate the PMTA process has already led to marketing-granted orders being granted for six products in December 2025. Other manufacturers are expected to have their products processed in the first half of this year. However, this doesn't guarantee that they will receive NGOs. A broader suite of improved products not only supports the category growth, but greatly enhances the value of the hype offer to both consumers and brand owners. The rapid growth of nicotine pouch category is leading to state tax proposals across a range of states. Amongst the highest of these tax levels is New York State, which is proposing a 75% tax on the wholesale price and would equate to approximately $2 per can. In our experience across multiple markets, a step change in the consumer price tends to trigger consumers to search for better value, which greatly benefits Hype. Hype believes that taxes on nicotine patches increase the fiscal relevance of the category for state governments and as such are beneficial, so long as the tax rates reflect the risk differential of nicotine patches. Moving to the next slide, slide seven, which shows how the different components of our US plan fits together. During the second half of 2025, we built up the competencies in our local US organization to drive accelerated growth. In parallel, in Q4, we completed a detailed analysis of the offline nicotine pouch consumer to fully understand both their trigger points and friction points for buying nicotine pouches online. The process was very insightful in highlighting the potential of our offer to a large and growing consumer segments and how we can refine our offer and our messaging to accelerate our growth. Some of the findings are already implemented, positively impacting the results, which I will share on the next slide. Many more of the refinements are planned to be implemented in the coming months relating to both customer experience and messaging. These changes should further boost our growth rates. In addition, we intend to further accelerate new consumer on the second half of 2026 with broader consumer communication activities. Moving to the next slide, slide eight, which looks at our performance in the US. The continued acceleration in quarter on quarter growth led to a year on year volume growth of 95% for the quarter. The acceleration continued into this year with circa 120% year-on-year growth in January. But part of this growth was driven by the reactivation of old Zing consumers who have shown strong retention rates since their return, the stronger signal of sustained growth rates, comes from the rapid acceleration in new customers, with almost 200% year-on-year growth in the quarter, and that continued to accelerate to circa 250% year-on-year growth in January. This, combined with our highest ever Net Promoter Score of 82, provides us with high confidence in the overall growth trajectory for 2026 and beyond. I would like to reiterate that the US is our top priority market. Moving to slide nine on the UK, which is our second priority market. We expect that the UK will be the largest nicotine patch market in Europe by the end of this decade. In parallel, the pending regulatory changes bode well for both the category sustainability and especially for hype, as it will force all retailers to raise the bar for mute access prevention and product standards to be in line with hype. We continue to see acceleration in the quarter-on-quarter growth rates, driven by both increases in new consumer inflow and excellent retention rates. Much of this acceleration is attributed to the combination of dedicated resources to the market and the structural advantages of the investment in infrastructure across the group in 2025. Feeding on from there to slide 10 and infrastructure. At various points in recent quarters, I have provided an update on our progress on our infrastructure overall. I'm happy to say that the last piece of the jigsaw went live in December. Already we can see significant improvements in our ability to launch features and bring meaningful value to our consumers and rapidly scale them across our markets. I have picked out three examples from the past months. Firstly, subscriptions. We have already improved the user experience on the subscription feature for our Scandinavian sites, and this is creating a notable uptick in new subscribers. And then we have launched this subscription service across the UK and Germany. Secondly, payments. We have easily onboarded a range of payment services, again across a range of markets, effectively simultaneously. These services are clearly appreciated by our consumers given the take-up rates in the early weeks. And third, we launched Vape on our network back store in Sweden, using our new architecture and our content creation tools to populate the majority of the content. The result has been our fastest ever growth in traffic for a new category on the site, resulting in excellent sales performance. While I highlight these as some of the many examples of what we've seen in recent weeks, I would like to also highlight that the significant effort which went into building a bespoke architecture for the nicotine category is expected to support many more such examples in the months and years ahead. Moving to slide 11 and looking at the regulatory outlook. For the UK, I would like to reiterate the positive signs that the tobacco and vape bill is moving the industry in line with the standards which Hype implemented many years ago. In the EU, we expect drafts for the TTD and the TPD to be released in the first half of this year. We expect this draft to undergo significant revision in the coming years as Member States and the European Parliament enter into negotiations, and we intend to keep abreast of these negotiations. In Austria, due to legislation classifying nicotine pouches as tobacco products, sales will only be allowed via the national monopoly in licensed physical shops from mid-2026. Hype expects to exit Austria at the end of June. Austrian sales account for less than 1% of the group's sales. In Sweden, the decision to revoke Snusbolag of Norden AB's license to sell traditional snus was upheld. Hype fundamentally disagrees with the ruling and is appealing it to the Supreme Administrative Court. We do not expect any material financial or operational impact on our Swedish business. With that, I will now hand over to Peter for an update on our financial performance.

speaker
Peter Deli
CFO

Thank you, Gavin. Good morning, everyone. Let me walk you through the financial section of our Q4 results. We conclude the year with continued momentum across our key markets, supported by strong nicotine pouch demand, meaningful progress in infrastructure, and ongoing scaling investment, particularly in the US, that positions us well for 2026. On slide 12, let me begin with our sales development. We crossed an important milestone this quarter. Net sales surpassed 1 billion SEC for the first time in a single quarter, growing 15% reported and 19% excluding the negative exchange impact. Supplier finance discounting in the US reduced all reported sales by around 2.6 percentage points versus Q4 2024. We do expect price competitiveness to remain on the US market, which allows us to present more and more attractive offers to our consumers. Separating the ZIN impact is not straightforward in this quarter, particularly due to a sustained, very attractive ZIN offer since relaunch. We saw a clear impact on other brands' performance. A big portion of our consumers who bought other brands from us before switched to ZIN. So simply comparing Q4 excluding ZIN versus Q4 2024 is not giving us a clear picture. SNU's revenue decline moderated in Q4 compared to Q3 as the Swedish excise-driven price effects rolled off. Nicotine pouches remain the clear growth engine, contributing 21% excluding FX growth, while vape and heat not burn contributed modestly at around 2%. So overall, the top line is strong and we are confident to maintain or even to accelerate this momentum into 2026. Moving to slide 13, you can see our long-term gross margin development. Q4 adjusted gross margin increased by nearly 0.6 percentage points year over year, reaching 17.7%, in line with the structural trend. The key drivers remain unchanged. Increased contribution of media and insights, and scale efficiencies in fulfillment. Part of this was offset by increased U.S. fulfillment costs and the vape inventory write-off of a specific brand in Sweden, but the overall trajectory remains firmly positive. Our annual negotiations for media and insights and campaign pricing support from the brand owners was completed in late 2025 for calendar year 2026. The demand for our enhanced services continues to grow significantly, enabling us to provide even better consumer offers in 2026. As I underlined in earlier quarters, the sustainability of our gross margin is the foundation for our global and US growth strategy, enabling the investments required to build the next chapter. I also want to reiterate the core principle of our business model. The value we create is shared among our consumers, business partners, and shareholders. Our constant priority is to increase the value we deliver to consumers, which in turn depends on strengthening the value we provide to our business partners. By continually enhancing our media and insights offerings, we can offer greater convenience and value to consumers while supporting healthier profit margins. Moving to slide 14 and overheads. Our overhead base increased to 130 million sec in the quarter, up 29% versus Q4 last year. The main drivers mirror what we highlighted in Q3. Strengthening our US local team and capabilities, ongoing investments in the media and insights, and brand building and online channel awareness initiatives. Just as in previous quarters, these increases are both planned and necessary. The US business requires elevated investment intensity at this stage, but the underlying return profile supported by strong consumer acquisition and retention remains highly attractive. This is the first quarter where we can see the site of scaling positively impacting the overhead as percentage of sales ratio. Over time, scale will reduce this ratio in the P&L. Moving to slide 15, and or adjusted EBIT. Adjusted EBIT in the quarter amounted to 31.3 million SEC, a 16% reduction year over year, with margin rates reduced from 4% to 3%. Looking on the chart on the left, let me start from a segmental EBITDA view. In our core markets where we operate at scale, we improved our profitability versus the same period last year. The reduction was mainly driven by the increased investments into the US and UK markets, within our growth segment, and the temporary increase of investment into our emerging segment. Looking at the composition of our P&L, as we saw earlier, we maintained our robust gross margin, lifting versus last year, which enabled us to invest into the foundation of future growth manifested in the increase in marketing investments and overheads. The appreciation also increased title infrastructure overhaul completed during 2024 and 2025. Our emerging segment investments reduced group adjusted EBIT by around 1.5 percentage points in the quarter. Underlying EBIT margin for core and growth remained robust, change driven by the previously mentioned investments into the growth segment. Overall profitability remains well aligned with our investment priorities and aligned with our long-term goals for the future. Slide 16, our core markets. Net sales increased to 732 million SEC, up 6%, reported, or 8% in constant currency. EBITDA grew 27% to 77 million SEC, lifting EBITDA margin to 10.5%. Nicotine pouches continue to reshape the segment mix. NP accounted for 57% of our core volume, up markedly from last year. Snooze volume declined as expected, still impacted by underlying category contraction. But this is the first quarter where the Swedish tax-driven price reduction does not influence the comparison base. The shift toward fast-growing nicotine pouch supports improved future growth rates. Within the consumer base, we see the same dynamics. NP users grew, while Swedish snooze decline offset it. We also seeing an increase in our share of wallet from our consumers, supporting volume and top line growth. Media revenues again supported EBITDA expansion, similar to the trend we highlighted in Q3. Slide 17 and our growth markets. Net sales grew 41% year over year to 279 million sec with nicotine pouch volume up 61%. As Gavin mentioned, the growth segment NP volume now represents over 40% of the total group NP volume. You can see the difference between volume and sales growth. The net negative price mix is mainly driven by US, where we saw a significant increase in supplier finance discounting, negatively impacting our sales, however keeping our gross margin intact. Active consumers increased 52% to 169,000. The US and UK were the standout performers. US driven by new consumer inflow and retention. The UK by accelerating MP penetration, as Gavin explained earlier. EBITDA was minus 4.4 million with a margin of minus 1.6%. As in Q3, profitability reflects increased US investments. This is exactly the pattern we expected at this stage. Strong revenue scaling, rising nicotine pouch penetration, and elevated capability investment that will reduce as a percentage of sales as we expand. On slide 18, our emerging segment. Net sales increased 40% to 41 million sec, driven by strong Swedish and German performance. During Q4, we scaled down and seized our operations in UK. We focused on inventory sell-off without replenishing sold out SKUs. This resulted weak UK vape sales performance, decline versus Q3 and also versus last year. In contrast, the way business in Sweden and Germany remained robust. We see solid new customer intake and the growing consumer base on these markets. Net sales for Sweden and Germany grew by 89% versus same period last year. EBITDA was minus 15.5 million, reflecting both commercial investments, stock write-offs, and the disproportionately high share of fixed costs for the current scale of this business. On slide 19, turning towards selected KPIs. Inventory increased during Q4, similar to previous years. The increase manifested across all markets where we expected inbound price increases affected January 1st and focused on brands with the highest level of increases. This stock build allow us to decide either to increase our price competitiveness or realize a higher gross margin during the sellout period. Importantly, this is a temporary increase, the inventory level is going back to normal during Q1. Our accounts receivable growth was driven by the growth in media and insights revenue, while our closing accounts payable balance increase was driven by the inventory purchases. Net debt remained low at 0.6 times last 12 months adjusted EBITDA, consistent with our longstanding capital discipline. Financially, we exit 2025 in a strong position with continued growth, stable growth margin, healthy working capital, and ample capacity to support expansion. With this, I will hand back to Gavin.

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

Thank you, Peter. Moving to our outlook on slide 21. In our view, a long-term future for Nicotine Patches, the online channel and Hype Group with its many strengths remains very encouraging. Conditions within the US and the UK in particular continue to evolve in a positive direction for Hype. Hype Group's operating model continues to generate increasing value for our consumers, the brand owners, and while also providing margin expansion opportunities over the medium term. The expected increase in regulatory requirements are manifesting, which further differentiates us given our sustained focus and investment in long-term compliance. As we execute on the priorities outlined in our April 2025 Capital Markets Day, we remain confident that our regulatory preparedness, operational discipline, consumer-centric approach, and major growth opportunities, notably in the US and the UK, position us to create long-term value and strengthen our leadership in the category. And feeding on from there, on slide 25, I would like to touch upon the medium-term guidance from our Capital Markets Day in April 2025, which runs out to 2028. We envision revenue growth rates of 18% to 25% CAGR over the period, with the US market being a material contributor. This takes into account the lower reported growth rates for 2025 due to the comparatively narrower consumer base in the US. We also guide towards 5.5% EBIT at the end of the period, plus or minus 150 basis points. While we have been materially increasing our EBIT over the past two years, we intend to reinvest into the US to accelerate our market share growth over this period. I would kindly direct your attention to our CMD material, which is available on our group site, and this provides more detail behind these targets. Lastly, the company does not intend to issue a dividend over this period, instead reinvesting surplus cash flows into the company's future expansion. Before I open up for questions, I would like to take the opportunity to thank my colleagues for the dedication and hard work in delivering these strong results. And with that, I will hand over to the operator for questions.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Nicholas Ekman from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.

speaker
Nicholas Ekman
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Good morning. First question for me is regarding your like-for-like growth. You've reported this very generously here now in the previous quarters. And I know that in Q4 of 24, you said you had 23% like-for-like growth compared to a reported 8% organic growth. And if I simply reverse that and do the same exercise now for Q4 in 25, it suggests the like-for-like growth well under 10%. But maybe I'm missing something here. And just if you could elaborate a little bit on what you see in terms of like-for-like growth.

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

Yeah. Good morning, Niklas. Yeah, I see the output of that being somewhat different, I think, the way you're getting to on your calculations, significantly higher. So I think there's two main factors running through this. One, we relaunched Zim in mid-September, but as you can imagine, we didn't necessarily press the button and all Zim consumers came back to us. So it's been a gradual buildup and continues to be a gradual buildup at this point in time in the business. The reason why we don't share like-for-like numbers within it is because not only on our platform, but also across the market within the US, you can see a much more dynamic consumer relationship between the brands at this point in time. So you see consumers jumping between brands much faster now than you did previously. And of course, as is always the case with online, you see it happen to an even greater extent online. For that reason, we're seeing much more cannibalization of Zing onto our previous consumer base, which effectively makes the like-for-like number misrepresentative of the actual performance and where we're getting on. So in summary, I think if you take those two factors into account, and particularly the first one as regards to the gradual buildup of Zing coming back into our assortment among the consumers and recognizing how difficult it is to be able to strip it out on a real terms basis, I would certainly have come up with a, shall we say, materially higher like-for-like growth than you've come up with there.

speaker
Nicholas Ekman
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Okay, that sounds fair, but I guess that works both ways, and that maybe means that the 23% like-for-like growth last year was also positively impacted by the migration from Zyn to other products.

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

guess so maybe that number was a little a little overstated i think there's one aspect which perhaps you can view it that way but i think the more important aspect in this one nicholas is that it wasn't it's the first point that it wasn't simply a case of that you know i'm seeing and all consumers come back at the beginning that it was growing gradually over the quarter and continues to grow in that sort of trajectory as we go forward

speaker
Nicholas Ekman
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

okay fair enough um secondly i'm just curious about this news decline here of a mere three percent um you've seen declines here in previous quarters of in kind of in mid teens uh was this kind of a one-off because of um uh the uh the the kind of the hoarding impact or um or the opposite would you say that the mid-teen decline that you've seen before was that the outlier

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

And so firstly, no, it's not 3% snus decline. I think what Peter was highlighting there in those slides is that of our group revenue, there was a decline of 3%. You also have to bear in mind that over two thirds of our total group revenue is nicotine pouches. So hence 3% reduction at a group level would get you in closer to a nine to 10% reduction of within the snus category itself.

speaker
Nicholas Ekman
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Okay, that makes sense. Very good. I'm also curious on the outlook statement here. You obviously have some strong current trading here in January, and you're also guiding for a resumed margin progression, margins trending higher. Is that something we can see already in Q1? And overall here, can you elaborate a little bit on your view on the balance between high investments in the U.S. market and margin expansion?

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

And so, yes, I am guiding towards that we're seeing very strong performance going into 2026 so far, based on what we've seen. But that is at a revenue level. I'm not guiding, or at least I don't believe I should be interpreted that I'm guiding towards margin expansion. And we're very much in the principle of that we would balance growth and margin to create long-term shareholder value on where we are. And while we can see significant returns on investing, into accelerating our growth, we will continue to do so. So I wouldn't necessarily read this one, Niklas, as though we are guiding towards margin expansion over the short to medium term.

speaker
Nicholas Ekman
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

I think what you're saying in the outlook statement is that you expect margins will move upward in line with your long-term 2028 guidance. So I guess That's more you're reiterating your 2028 guidance rather than guiding for 2026?

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

Exactly, yes. That's reaffirming what we've said for 2028.

speaker
Nicholas Ekman
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Very clear, thank you. Last one, just if you could elaborate a little bit on this legal dispute with the Stockholm licensing unit. Just on potential outcomes, obviously the Administrative Court of Appeals now they have held the decision and if the Supreme Court does not grant you an appeal this I guess would become legally binding. Do you see any implications on the rest of your group if that were to happen, if you're not allowed to appeal to the Supreme Court?

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

No, we want to be very clear on this. We see no financial or operational impact, no material financial or operational impact on our Swedish business on the basis of this. The vast, vast, vast majority of our operations in Sweden do not operate within that municipality or under that license and have not done so for over a year. So we do not envisage that. We do believe that the findings was wrong. We will push for the appeal more as a point of principle from where it comes through rather than as a financial impact.

speaker
Nicholas Ekman
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Very clear. Thank you so much. Thanks for taking my questions. Thank you, Nicolas.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The next question comes from Marayo Adesina from Barclays. Please go ahead.

speaker
Marayo Adesina
Analyst, Barclays

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just two from me. I think, Peter, you mentioned something on a ZIN offer. I'm not sure if I heard correctly, so just wanted to get some clarification on what that offer entails. And then secondly, just on this proposed 75% state tax on nicotine pouches in New York, obviously you're mentioning that it could be a positive, but it needs to represent the risk differential for nicotine pouches. So just wondering what you make of that proposed 75%.

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

Good morning, Oriah. Let me start with the second one first on the New York taxes piece coming through on it here. So, yes, you can see a range of state taxes getting out of the public arena for proposals for next year. I think many of them are coming in at the 20 to 30% as a percentage of wholesale price for it is. New York is perhaps the most extreme or certainly the most extreme of any sizable state, coming in at 75%, which equates to roughly $2 per can. Yeah, our view on that is very much that if this category is growing, it was inevitable that there would be taxes introduced on it, which we consider to be quite, it brings the local states as a stakeholder into the category as it moves forward. And our view is often what we see is if there is a notable uptick, such as a couple of dollars in New York being added on to the consumer online or offline, at any given time, then you generally see that sort of overnight change tends to activate consumers to notice that change much more than the usual 1% or 2% or 3% which they get each year when it comes through on it. So hence, they will often become more aware of lower priced channels such as hype. And of course, this increase in taxes will affect both online and offline to the same level as it comes through. And then, sorry, then you ask a question on the Zyn offer as well. So I guess what people can see looking at our sites in general, our stores in general in the US is both for Zyn and also for many other products on our platforms as well. We have had very compelling offers coming through during the fourth quarter of 2025 and As such, it has been one of the driving components, I believe, to the acceleration growth in our consumer base and where we are. And that is also notable when it comes to the material gap between our volume growths within the US and our revenue growth within the US, where that supplier financed discounting going through is slowing down our revenue growth relative to our volume growth over the shorter term.

speaker
Marayo Adesina
Analyst, Barclays

Okay, that's clear. Thank you so much.

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

Thank you very much, Araya. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The next question comes from Alexander Silgestrom from Pareto. Please go ahead.

speaker
Alexander Silgestrom
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Good morning, guys. Just starting off here with your comments on the strong development in the M&I contracts that are updated annually. Just wondering if you can give any indication on the expected growth in M&I for growth and the core markets.

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

Good morning, Alexander. So each year, throughout the year, we develop both the services for both media and insights back out to our suppliers. And we will often test those with a pilot supplier or two during the latter part of the year, and then bring them into our negotiations during Q4. whereby the further enhanced and improved service combined with the underlying growth of the business means that we would then charge more for those services as we go into the following calendar year. Now, what we don't do here is we don't strip out M&I as an explicit number within our numbers and share how they have gone either historically in detail or forward-looking either. What we do say in general is that median insights make up roughly 10% of our sales. And what we also do highlight is that median insights have been growing at about twice the rate of our overall group revenue since we IPO'd. And I believe it would be rational enough to assume that those sort of trajectories are what we would like to sustain for 2026 and the future years as well and where it gets to. Does that give you a sufficient level of clarity?

speaker
Alexander Silgestrom
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Yeah, I think that's fair. So you still expect it on a group level to be sort of twice of the organic growth. That's fair to assume when we try to model it.

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

Exactly. That's what we have been delivering and that's what we would like to continue to target. And I think we did that in our CMD in a bit more sort of guidance levels there as well.

speaker
Alexander Silgestrom
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Yeah. Thanks for that. And then moving on to the gross margin, it was down I think 140 basis points here sequentially. Just if you could talk a bit about the main drivers, how much is related to ZIN, and then I guess in the report you mentioned overheads as well, if you just could walk us through this and what to expect here into full year 26 as well.

speaker
Peter Deli
CFO

Absolutely. Good morning. So ZIN had no impact on all gross margin. It had impact on the reported sales But on a gross margin level, it had no implication on all results. The gross margin versus the previous quarter was down because of two key items. First, some testing and piloting of different shipping options in the US, what we are refining now further. And as I mentioned, we had one specific brand where we had inventory problems in Sweden, which is running through the emerging market P&L, where we effectively wrote off some inventory.

speaker
Alexander Silgestrom
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Can you quantify that latter one?

speaker
Peter Deli
CFO

The write-off? It represented around 20% of the negative EVDA of the emerging segment. Sub 20.

speaker
Alexander Silgestrom
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Okay. And then maybe a last one from my end. You talk about the marketing investments here in the US. And now I'm referring to the sort of H2 upper funnel investments to drive penetration, wondering if you could quantify the costs or sort of the magnitude of the investments here in H2.

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

I think it's a little bit premature to be able to quantify that one at this point in time in detail, Alexander. What we will state is that we will maintain capital discipline and we will only be prepared to invest so long as we can see a very robust return over the medium term on that money which we're placing in. But the specifics and the details of where it is, I think, is a little bit premature to go through at this point in time.

speaker
Peter Deli
CFO

I think Alexander it's also fair to say that these activities on that scale might be something new for our group so we will continuously monitor the cost of customer acquisition costs and make sure that it's in line with the consumer lifetime value what we have and scale the investment in line with this discipline okay yeah that's fair enough and maybe just following up on that if you talk about sort of some of the key levers that you see

speaker
Alexander Silgestrom
Analyst, Pareto Securities

in terms of driving the increased penetration in terms of marketing efforts? Is it sort of podcasts or ads in magazines or what will be the most important drivers here? Or is that also too premature to talk about?

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

So the way we're viewing this one, Alexander, is what we're seeing at the moment from the research we did in the latter part of last year is that there was many aspects within our offering which were really well received by the consumer base, but perhaps somewhat misunderstood. And even tidying those up so far, we can see a material impact we've been performing within the US since, with very minor tweaks as it comes through. So I think it's more about going a little bit further on that over the next quarter or two. And during the latter part of Q2, we intend to be able to test a range of different channels. We're already dipping our toe into a few, but test in a more quantifiable way, a range of different channels and where we get to, and then understand where the return on those are. And as we understand that level of return, that will bring us to a stage then to determine how much we would like to put the FUT down when it comes to accelerating growth based on the cost and where that ties back to on the lifetime value. So I think it's fair to say we're looking at a range of channels here, but needless to say, it will only ever be channels which have a disproportionately large share of the consumer base as over 25. So we have been testing, for example, some on the podcast space, some in out-of-store space, in adult venues like bars and nightclubs. There's been a range of different dynamics here, which we've been dipping our toe on already, and we will go a bit further on during the middle of the year.

speaker
Alexander Silgestrom
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Okay, sounds exciting. That's it from my end. Thanks, guys.

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

Thank you very much. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The next question comes from Daniel Therrien from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

speaker
Daniel Therrien
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Hi, guys. Just one quick question from me. Just in your core market segment, the commentary from the first quarter attributed the nicotine pouch volume growth to strong performance in both Sweden and Norway. However, for the following three quarters, the commentary only highlights strong growth in Norway as the driver. So could you just provide some color on the sort of dynamics in Sweden? I'm just thinking about how it relates to your net sales guide if the Sweden volume growth is more moderated and alongside the Smith's decline.

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

Thanks. Good morning. So actually, yes, we've had strong performance in both markets over that period of time. I guess the reference more to strong performance in Norway was perhaps a bit of a hangover from previous years, whereby we had experienced some struggles in Norway a couple of years ago. So it was good to remind people that we were falling back on track within Norway itself at this stage. But no, I would consider us to be showing strong performance in both markets over 2025 in general, and of course Q4. And then, sorry, maybe you had a question in there around snooze as well. Did you?

speaker
Daniel Therrien
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Sorry. No, I was wondering if the volume goes in speed and it's fine, then that should all make sense. Thank you. Yeah.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. There are no more phone questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions or closing comments.

speaker
Gavin O'Dowd
CEO

Thank you very much for joining us for today's release. We look forward to speaking to you again in three months. Thank you. Bye-bye.

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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