H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB (publ)

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the H&M Group 9-month Report 2026 webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Good morning and a warm welcome everyone.

Today, we present the third quarter results for 2026 for the H&M Group. My name is Josef Ahlberg and I'm Head of Investor Relations. Before I hand you over to our CEO, Daniel Edviger, I'd like to share this morning's setup. Daniel will start with a brief summary of our results and progress. Then our CFO, Adam Karlsson, will provide some details on the financials. And after that, Daniel will share a brief outlook. We will then open up for a Q&A session where Daniel, Adam and I will be available to answer your questions. With that, please welcome Daniel.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. In the third quarter, we continue to strengthen the H&M Group. We delivered a strong operating profit and a return to growth. The operating margin for the quarter reached 10.6%, And this includes a positive one-off effect of approximately 1.6 percentage points relating to tariffs and import of goods that increase the cost of goods sold in previous quarters. The improvement is clear. Looking at the 12 months, the operating, rolling 12 months, the operating margin is now at 9% versus 7.2 for the same time last year. I'm happy to see that our summer offer has been well received and that it contributed to sales improvement, particularly towards the second half of this quarter. Overall, net sales increased by 1% in local currencies, while they were still somewhat affected by logistic disruptions. For September, we expect a sales growth of 1% compared with the same period last year. And before we dive in to more progress from the quarter, I'd like to share some of the fashion highlights from this quarter in this short video. So please enjoy. Our strategic priorities remain product, experience, and brand. Here is where we can make the biggest difference for our customers. Every day, we compete for customers' attention and we need to deliver at our best, deliver the most relevant experience in every touchpoint, whether it is in one of our digital channels, in some of our flagship stores across the globe, or in any of our stores across the world. So to support these priorities, we further strengthen a number of key enablers. We continue to develop our sourcing capabilities. We are empowering our teams closest to our customers, and we are becoming increasingly data driven to support better and faster decisions across the business. We are not yet where we want to be, but step by step we are firmly building a faster and more flexible and customer focused H&M. With a growing share of in-season buying and shorter lead times, we increased our flexibility and our ability to respond to changing customer needs and trends. This way we can improve the precision of our offering, create more attractive assortment and increase the share of full price sales. To deliver even greater value for money, we also continue to invest in product quality and durability. Delivering a stronger customer offer requires progress across the entire value chain. And as our organization of fewer Layers comes into place, we empower our colleagues to make decisions closer to our customers in all our 82 markets. In parallel, the investments we make in data, technology and AI to strengthen our ability to become more efficient in product design, sourcing in product flow and product flow, but it also helps us to become more personalized across our different touchpoints. We want to make a real difference in how our customers experience H&M in stores and online. Our Omni model is a fantastic platform. It allows us to continue to build strong and direct relationships with our customers. And as we invest in the most attractive locations, we close the least productive ones and we upgrade existing stores and expand into new markets. We continue to improve the productivity of our store portfolio. We also continue to invest in technologies that help and improve the customer experience and the way we operate our stores. Through the extended use of RFID technology and the extended rollout of self-checkouts, we make it easier for our customers to find what they're looking for and complete their purchases. Together with a more relevant assortment in each store and increased personalization across our digital channels, These efforts create a more relevant and seamless customer journey for all of our customers. To further strengthen our brands and deepen customer engagement, we continue to combine in-house design with strategic collaborations and partnerships. On the left hand side of your slide, you see how H&M showed up even stronger this year at the London Fashion Week last Thursday night. With a high impact and reach in social media, presenting our in-house autumn winter collection, ready to buy right away, creating lines outside of our flagship stores all across the world on Friday. And this autumn comes with a line of really exciting collaborations, such as Wardrobe NYC, what you see here in the middle, Elie Saab, as you can see on the right, and H&M Homes Kelly Wiersler collaboration, where we're making great fashion and design accessible to more customers. We are also evolving the way we build our brands and connect with our customers by growing our digital and creator-led approach to marketing. By increasingly working with digital creators and more authentic content, we can reach a broader audience while remaining relevant to different customer groups. This helps us build stronger engagement and bring our fashion to life with trusted voices.