5/2/2024

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

Good morning everyone. Thank you for listening into this presentation and sorry for the delay. We are the management of Humble Group and today we will present the results for the first quarter of 2024. My name is Simon Petrine, I'm the CEO of the group. With me today I have Johan Lenartsen, our CFO. Hello everyone. So at first we will do some overview of Humble Group at a glance. We will then dig into the financial highlights for the quarter. We will continue with the cash flow and then do some deep dive into each of the segments and to round things up with some focus for 2024. And as always, if you have any questions, feel free to send them in to us and we will take them with the Q&A by the end of the presentation. So to summarize the start of the year and the period, I think Q1 has been a strong start for the group. We have maintained the momentum that we have seen throughout the last years with dedicated sales growth in all of our markets. We reached a net sales of 1.8 billion, so it's a steady improvement from last year. If you will buy both some acquisitive growth but also organic growth. And mainly we could actually start seeing the results from our efficiency work that we have done to improve the profitability. But let's start a bit with Humble Group at a glance for those that don't know us as well. We are a modern FMCG group focusing on developing products within this industry that are focused on health and sustainability. We help our companies drive transformation and to become a bigger and better version of themselves prior to the acquisition. Our mission here is to really be a challenge within this industry and to help drive change globally. It is one of the world's biggest industries and it's on steady transformation and improvement towards these trends. This is something that we have really seen throughout the year. When we started this journey, it was clear to me that this is something that is going to happen and needs to happen. And I can happily say that we have higher demand and requests from customers and retailers and new countries than we've ever had before. Our way of doing this is to continuously improve our offering. We are developing new products and we are bringing new products and brands to new customers and markets globally. So the trend for health and well-being as well as sustainability, it is here to stay. And it's also driven by how consumers are aware of themselves and with the digitalization and awareness through social media. The consumers are more and more demanding of products that meet their persona and their benefits. So let's look at the platform that we have established throughout the years. I've been talking a lot about this before, but now I can probably say that across the group we have a central platform where we are supporting our companies with financing solution, HR support, which is something that can be very tedious for any entrepreneur to run. We have a -the-art business intelligence system and we also help driving business system changes and IT solutions. We also run several strategic initiatives that might be quite demanding for an entrepreneur to run themselves. We currently have 18 different work streams centrally that is bigger initiatives that we are driving to support further growth and improve profitability. And then on top of this, we have a track record of doing M&A. We have been taking it cool for a while and I think we're going to continue to do so until we feel that we organically are able to continue to grow with acquisitions that would fit the group. So this is the central sort of functions and support that we mainly provide to our entrepreneurs and our CEOs and management out in our subsidiaries to make it easier and more fun and rewarding to be an entrepreneur. On top of this, we have three growth drivers that we are able to scale with synergies across the group. First one is product development. I dare say that we are one of the better FMCD groups out there in developing products. We have developed many new novelties through ourselves, but also good at looking at what is a trending product. If we see another company doing a success product, we're quite quick to copy that and launch it into new markets with one of our own brands or new brand. We are also really strong in sourcing. We have more than 300 contract manufacturers that we work with and we have more than 10 own manufacturing companies within the group that are very well positioned to continue to scale with innovation and being a dynamic partner to our own brands, but also external brands. On top of this, we have distribution in more than 100 markets. In Sweden, we have one of the strongest platforms to try new products, to bring it out into all channels and to really refine the success recipe. Sweden is a great market to be in when it comes to innovation because we are in the forefront for health and sustainability products in FMCD. So if we're able to succeed here, we know that it's a great product that we can bring out internationally. So those two value drivers is something that we really focus on to help our companies and our entrepreneurs to grow their businesses. And this is a way for us to create value within the group. So enough talk about that. Let's dig into some of the financial highlights for the first quarter of this year.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

Yes, as Simon already mentioned, we have noticed a strong demand for our goods and our products overall. The net sales for the quarter amounted to just around 1.8 billion SEC, comprising a total growth of 15%. The organic growth amounted to 11%, which was a little bit negatively impacted by the calendar impact. And the last 12 months, the total net sales now reached just around 7.3 billion SEC.

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

Yes, and I mean, I think we have sustained strong growth. We had a really good Q1 last year. I think it was the highest organic growth for all of the quarters last year. But we were still able to grow quite nicely. As Johan mentioned, we had a negative effect of the early Easter with the goods deliverable business days. But in return, we have seen that April has started fantastic, not only because of the calendar effect, but because we also have a strong momentum. Some of the strategic initiatives that we will talk about later in detail within the segment overview is starting to having an effect. But also in general, I think the consumers really like our products. We have been focusing on a lot of innovation and some of that innovation is now rolling out. And we're also expanding into new market. We will also talk more about that later. So I think in general, the momentum is really good within the group. I'm confident throughout the rest of the year that we will continue to grow at a nice pace. But of course, I mean, we are a growth company and I'm happy to see that we're sustaining that growth with growth every month. So we are on a good track here. But the growth could have been higher. But I'm hoping that we will recoup it throughout the coming quarters of the year.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

And looking at the gross profit, we have communicated that earlier that this is a key area for us. We increased the gross profit to 566 million, comprising a gross margin of just around 31 percent, which is an increase with one percent from previous year. And this is, of course, something that we are satisfied with to show progress on the profitability levels. The last couple of months, the gross profit amounted to just around 2.2 billion and is also on the

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

right path. Absolutely. What I'm happy about here is to see that we are actually increasing the gross profit more than the net sales. Which is something we haven't really done historically with the margin trend we've had. We have seen a clear trend shift here in our gross margin that we month over month are actually able to improve it. But as I've said historically, we've been at much higher level when we look on the Performa base. So we still have a lot of work to do here. But I'm happy to see that actually in Q4 and Q1 now, the last two quarters, we have been able to start showing some gross margin improvements. So this is something we have started to do, but it remains a high focus for us to continue to improve. Because we can also see that when we're able to drive more gross profit, it actually translates into nice profitability for the group.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

Talking about profitability, we noticed an increase in the adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA levels for the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to 152 million compared to previous quarter on 128 million. And the adjusted EBITDA grew with 25% and reached 128 million for the quarter. And we made a reassessed judgment of the accounting principles for capitalized development costs, which affected the comparison numbers. Do you want to share some reflections?

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

I'm really happy to see these improvements. It is one of the best quarter like on a percentage wise base we've had in a long time. We're also looking at Performa that have actually organically are able to improve the profitability this much. And it's not only driven by the increased gross profit, but actually we're getting some scale with the size of the group. And I think this also is a very good indicator of what's going to happen going forward if we're able to scale with initiatives that we are working on to improve utilization within our manufacturers with additional shifts and increased outputs. So I think this is showing really well that we have started to invest in the platform throughout the last few years. And now we are actually going to start seeing the results from that now when we are continuing to grow. Of course, it's important to have a nice balance here between improving the profitability, but also continuing to invest because there is so much demand out there for our products and brands. So we need to continue to do that as well. But I'm happy about the results here and the strong improvement regarding the capitalized expenses. I think this is something that actually will improve the cash flow since we will have less tax for the group. And it's also less administrative costs now when we have done the new assessments. So I'm positive about the results and the improved profitability. This is something that we want to continue to see throughout the coming periods of the year. But of course, we need to maintain this gross profit improvement to see that happening. And

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

just looking at the cash flow, we noticed a strong operating cash flow before changing network capital with 127 million. And we're of course happy with those levels. We can also see that we took some strategic decisions regarding the inventory. And we had a net working capital decrease of 67 million that reduced the total operating cash flow after changing network and capital to 60 million. And this has of course been a strategic decision from our side in order to improve the gross margin, for example, as Simon mentioned, to avoid, for example, some price increases that we had in the beginning of the year. Some reflections,

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

Simon. Yeah, I mean, as you once said, some of our distribution companies, we do sell a lot of products with cacao. So we knew that we got some price increases corresponded to us. And we know that they're going to take into effect in Q2. So it's better for us to stock up with these products at lower levels and potentially have a better margin when we raise our prices in return to our customers. Mind you also that, I mean, we did have a great cash release last year from networking capital. We do have further potential to continue to release networking capital. But naturally, also with the growth that we are having around 10 to 15 percent should be a natural tie up in networking capital. So this is something that we have seen. We are also, as we're going to go into later in the segment overview, scaling many of our companies into an additional shift and positioning them for further growth. And if we're going to do that, we also need the raw materials to scale that production. So I think this is quite natural for us. And I'm happy to tie some networking capital if it's a way for us to fuel further growth. That being said, you know, my ambition and the team's ambition is not that we should have this sort of tie up like we have seen this quarter, which has been significantly higher than the total levels of networking capital to sales that we have in the group by the year and last year. I think overall the cash flow is still looking strong and solid from the operation. It's a steady improvement. And it's one of our highest priorities for the coming periods to maintain a strong cash flow and utilizing that to deliver the business further. So let's dig into the segment overview. Those have been with us for some time. Sorry for the repetition, but we have four business segments in the company. We have Nordic Distribution, which is a capitalist segment for mainly the Swedish market where we have a really strong access through all of the different sales channels. We then have three different product segments. The first one is future snacking, where we focus on snacking, both standard and conventional snacking, but also sugar reduced, mainly candy and chewing gums, etc. So it's really interesting high growth segments where we have taken the market from .5% to more than 3% of packed jelly confectionary. Very interesting. We then have quality nutrition, which is our nutrition segment where we are the leading Nordic B2B manufacturer of nutrition products. We also have the leading brand in Australia, Body Science, which has done tremendously well the last two years. And then we have the last segment, which is sustainable care, which is a mix of brands within sustainability, personal care and home care products, Humbleco and Nati. And then we have some companies which we internally call dynamic retail partners that are specialists working with the retailers to co-develop brands exclusively for the retailers, which is a very interesting segment. It's also the biggest company in the group's solvent position in that segment. So this is the overall group. And in all of the segments we have, as I mentioned earlier, our platform, we have research and development, we have our own manufacturing, we have our own brands and also the distribution to access the customers directly.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

Looking at the first segment, future snacking, we had a quite stable net sales development compared to the previous quarter. And this was negatively impacted by Trugam, which had an extremely good quarter last year. The total effect was 18 million. And we also divested the Bain production in January 2024, which had a negative impact on the sales with 4 million. So adjusted for D2 effects, the growth of the segment was 11% in regards of net sales. And in terms of gross profit, we managed to increase the gross profit and the gross margin also increased with one percentage unit.

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

Yes, so I mean, future snacking is one of the segments that's really close to my heart. I think it's very exciting to see what we are doing here. Looking at the net sales development for the quarter, it might not look like that exciting, but it's actually really exciting. I mean, we have tremendous response from the market. Pandy, one of the companies that was early on in the group has done a fantastic job and development throughout the year. Launched into Norway beginning of this year, and it's just blasting over there. So this is a really, really exciting opportunity to see that what we have done in Sweden with sugar reduced confectionary, taking it from .5% to more than 3%. We have all of the leading brands in this segment. So if we're able to do this internationally, the market for this is tremendous. So this is really exciting and we're starting to see the results now when we're scaling into new markets. Trugam, as you mentioned, I mean, they had an extraordinary Q1 last year due to a conflict between one of their competitors and the main retailers in Germany. So that was a bit of an outlier, but actually the company is in a good momentum overall. And we have a really exciting new product line that we're going to launch in, I think, next week. So keep your eyes out for that and look at their Instagram and you will see that. I think it's going to be a real hit and it's a really exciting project. So look out for that. And overall, I mean, in this segment, we have a lot of strategic initiatives ongoing. As I mentioned, really strong trajectory with Pandy. We did move tweak from historically Bain production, which we divested in Q4 into Grans now and starting the production, which has been sort of a setback with that delayed transfer. So that also impacted the segment a bit. But now we're sending the first products to FCB, who's the distributor for those products in Sweden. So we're on pace with that. But looking at some of the growth initiatives in this segment, just to give an idea of what we have ahead of us. We've done a big job with gathering all the confectionary manufacturers under one umbrella called Arena Confectionary. And here we're starting now to gather all the procurement of like sugar, glucose and gelatin, et cetera, to maximize, first of all, the pricing power. But second of all, also to have the volume available. We're also doing sort of an adjustment between those companies of what they produce. So Fransson, for instance, we're taking the hard boiled caramels and we now taking them into Grans instead. So Grans will go from one shift of the hard boiled caramels to into two shift, increasing their capacity output with 100 percent. This will also enable Fransson to do foam candy and jelly candy. So we're now stepping up from one to two shifts in Fransson, which will also increase that capacity to 100 percent. This change is now actually happening as we speak. So from May, June and forward, we should be up and running in Fransson with that second shift, which is really exciting. Grans, who's the biggest manufacturers here. Here we don't have an additional shift, but rather a shift sort of prolonging. So we're increasing the length of the shift, which will bring us additional 40 percent capacity into confectionary of the jellies. And that's also really, really exciting to see. So we have some big plans over here and we're actually prospecting, increasing with an additional facility for Grans because we are, you know, if we would have the capacity available, we would have significant improvements in the net sales for this segment. So I received a B Corp certification, which I think is great to see. It's the second company that has been B Corp certified since our acquisition. And they're also on a really good track and has been since we started the journey together with them. So a lot of exciting things happening here. I think the main focus going forward is to continue to scale with our sugar reduced candy internationally. Pandy has the leading flag there with fantastic trajectory, almost 100 percent growth year to date, which is great to see. And then also to make sure we are able to deliver the products. So here it's clearly been some capacity constraints that we, you know, it takes some time to do this. Like we've been working on it for more than a year. We've invested in additional personnel, et cetera, to make sure it happens. And I'm really excited now because it's in Q2 and Q3 is when we're going to start seeing the effect from those strategic initiatives rolling out.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

Looking at the sustainable care segment, we noticed a stable growth. Solent is our machine in terms of deliverance. The net sales amounted to 522 million, increased from 484 in the previous quarter. And most significantly, we also managed to increase the gross margin to 36 percent from 34 percent, which we are of course satisfied with. Simon, comments?

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

Yeah, so Solent is the biggest company in this segment and they're just doing a fantastic job. Solent is also the biggest company within the group. So it's quite rewarding to have that sort of business growing at solid double digit figures and also seeing this margin improvement now when the freight cost has come down significantly compared to 2022. So this is very reassuring to see. What we're also doing with Solent is that we have now invested in a new team. So we're actually making it the sort of humble group powerhouse for UK. We have an integration that it's now finalized where Good Superfoods actually is a part of Solent Group going forward. So we really see some strong development in this segment thanks to Solent. As you're aware, we have HumbleCove and Natty, which is two brands in the premium segment for personal care and home care. That sort of positioning has been quite tough to have with the pricing situation for consumers in Europe. But we're actually starting to see some really good results here. Both HumbleCove and Natty are on a good track to start improving their growth again, but also mainly the profitability. So I'm quite happy with the development in this segment. And I think it's a good segment for us because the cash conversion is really high. And we're starting to see the results from the initiatives that we've been doing throughout the last two years to pay for some strong growth now when the market is starting to be strong again. We are also doing some strategic development in fancy stage to streamline the production there. And it's also a way for us to mitigate the geopolitical risk with Asia that we have. So overall, I think the development in this segment is strong. We don't have that many strategic initiatives here, but I think the companies is more like company focused to make those companies grow even faster and make the right strategic decisions to take them to the next level.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

Looking at quality nutrition, we notice a strong solid growth here as well. Net sales amounted to $389 million for the quarter compared to $345. We managed to grow the gross profit to $122 million, reaching a total gross margin for the quarter of 31% compared to 26% for the previous quarter. This is of course in line with what we are working on on a daily basis. Do you want to comment on the strategic initiatives?

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

Yeah, so I mean, first of all, let's talk about Body Science. I mean, when we acquired this company, I think they were number three in the market. Now we're actually number one in the Australian market. It's a market that the size of Scandinavia, so it's actually a very nice position to have. And I mean, this company is just doing a fantastic job growing, which is really rewarding to see for us. What we have done here is to look at, OK, what is actually working here in Europe and Scandinavia and how can we utilize our product knowledge and help in a body science further in Australia. So if you know about the Soft Bar, which is a soft protein bar, it has been a fantastic success in the market. We've seen tremendous growth and taking a big market share in a record time. So we've taken the recipe that we also developed a version for ourselves in bars reduction. So we will contract manufacturing that for other companies now, which has been very hard to find in Europe for several years now. But we've taken that recipe and knowledge and we brought it to Australia. In addition to that, last year, as you know, we acquired a bar line from a bankruptcy. We've gotten that bar line up and running in basically six months time. And now already in Cuba, we started to roll out our only produced soft bars in Australia. We are the only ones doing it in that market and we are first with it. So this is really, really exciting. I think it's a way for us capitalizing on the product development knowledge within the group, but also bringing a new innovation on sort of like exclusivity base to Australia with the leading brands. So this is a really exciting opportunity. And also on top of that, it's our own production where we have it vertically integrated. So it's actually very profitable for us to do so as well. Let's talk about Sweden then and our contract manufacturing here. I mean, bars, as I've mentioned historically, is also really exciting. I mean, we have tremendous demand. We sold out basically the entire production for 2024 early on in 2023. And we have been investing significantly throughout the last two years to be able to scale. I mean, bars production did around 100 million last year and, you know, we're basically flat because of the capacity constraints. But with the different steps we're taking now, stepping on into an additional shift in all of the bar lines, which is now ramping up here in Cuba, but mainly in Q2. We have a double line coming in Q3 and we have an additional double line coming in Cuba next year. We will be able to increase the sales of bars production with several hundred percent during the year and next year. So that's really exciting. We have already sold all the capacity for 2024. So looking forward to see what we can do in 2025 there. We also have a Valko, which is one of the biggest companies in this segment. Pretty much the same story here. We've been capacity constraints. We've been moving machinery to separate the colonial and the powders, which is still ongoing. And we're also going to step up into an additional shift, which would give us around 80 percent extra. So this is something that we're rolling out in Q3 as our estimate, which will also drive additional sales within the segment. So a lot of things happening here. The third thing I want to mention is the energy drink line. I mean, we started this project in Q2 last year. I think we've done it at a quite good pace because we have a plan to get it started now in the end of Q2. And it's a really, really interesting opportunity. We can do up to 60 million cans here. And we have really strong demand from external customers that wants to come and produce with us, but also to bring in-house many of the cans that we produce externally. We do more than 20 million cans externally today. So this will be a nice margin improvement to take that vertically integrated into the group and produce for our own brands. So overall, I think there's a lot of things happening here. And pretty much the same story as future snacking. We've been a bit constrained with capacity, but our mission here is to support our companies with strategic competence to see, OK, how can we take your business and make it many times bigger in the coming five years? And if we're able to do that, invest in the right sort of machinery, automation, I think it's going to be one of the winners for us going forward.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

Yes, and looking at the last segment of the group, Nordic distribution, we noticed a strong growth here as well of 691 million SEC compared to 526 million. And the growth was a little bit fueled by acquisitions as we acquired the last parts of Priva in March 2023, which was fully consolidated now during the first quarter of 2024. And we noticed a gross margin decrease of the segment to 22 percent from 24 percent. And this was a little bit impacted by this full consolidated effect, which took place in the first quarter. Do you want to comment something on the strategic initiatives?

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

Yeah, I mean, in this segment, we've done a lot of integration. Nord for the GST, we have Priva Stockholm and Ystad going into Priva Nesjö. And outside of that, I think there is a lot of work still to be done. I mean, we're now being able to get all the Priva entities together and we're starting to work as one. We've done a big implementation of the IT infrastructure, which is almost done, which will improve the efficiency quite significantly in Priva in general. So we want to really build a modern setup here for distribution for our own brands, but also external brands that work with us. And as you mentioned, I mean, the gross margin here is not a positive development. It's a little bit about the consolidation. But I still think there is a lot of work to be done here to start negotiating as one group instead of the entities doing it themselves like they've done historically. And this is one of the initiatives that we are driving to see how can we do that. We have also been throughout last year, almost 12 months, doing a big freight negotiation. Which will not only impact this segment, but it will have a bigger impact in this segment than the other ones to get a framework agreement for freight. So that is also a way for us to improve the profitability and efficiency here. But I think overall, I mean, the segment is on a strong growth. We have a few companies here like GSD, BSN, et cetera. They've been doing this for many years and have really stable growth. And I think the Priva group as a whole, there is so much untapped potential there with the retailers, MyWay for instance. So we are working here to make it even better. But I still think we're in a good trajectory. But of course, as we also mentioned historically on the cash flow, we need to be mindful about the inventory tie up. I'm not worried about scrapping or anything because we have really high stock turnover in this segment. But of course, we want to release that working capital to be able to utilize it for better purposes. Okay, so before we're rounding things up for the Q&A, I just want to mention our focus for 2024 going forward. I've talked quite a lot today about the strategic initiatives. I'm really excited to see what we are going to do on the remainder of this year and next year. It's time to see what are the investments that we have done actually going to result with. And I'm really excited to see actually what's going to happen. I mean, now we're going to be able to scale into additional shifts and not having to increase the fixed costs, but rather working with just the increased output. So that's really, really exciting. But then again, we also need to make sure it happens. And there's a lot of initiatives ongoing simultaneously. So our focus is and our top priority is to make sure that we are able to execute on those initiatives in a good manner. Second of all, we need to maintain a high cash conversion. I think it's great to see the strong cash flow from the operations, but we need to be able to maintain that and also make sure that it's run through after the networking capital. So that is also one of the main focuses for the year. Improved gross margin. A lot of the input prices have started to come down, but then we have some input prices like the cacao prices that went up significantly and now it's down again. So, you know, we need to work on our margins here and be able to see what can we do with the cogs and how can we work with the pricing, especially out towards the customers where we have capacity constraints. I mean, we shouldn't be kept at capacity if we don't have the right prices. So there's still a lot of work to be done here also in the Nordic distribution, like we mentioned historically. And then the fourth pillar, which is the incubator. I mean, we launched in Q1 the initiative with Bablana, like you've seen in a press release. That's really exciting. We are looking to have several of those major initiatives where we partner with an existing brand or a profile, an influencer of a global scale, where we are actually the machinery that are able to launch a new brand or product line into FMCG, which we have the capacity to do because we are entrepreneurs, but we also have the platform available within Hamba Group. So I think this is really exciting. We're going to look to launch two to four of these initiatives per year. And when I talk about initiatives in this, it's meaningful initiatives that actually can make a difference on our total group growth, given the size of Humble today. And then the last point is actually about internationalization. It has been a lot of work to really get the group together throughout 2023 and 2024. But now we are pushing the paddle on growth and we're going to start expanding into the U.S. market. We have ongoing initiatives to see how we can rapidly scale mainly in our future snacking brands, because we know we have a competitive advantage versus the products that is available in the U.S. market. And it's vastly bigger than the Swedish and European one even. So that's really exciting. But also to see the potential to scale into Asia, Australia and Europe with the brands that aren't in Europe. So we are working a lot with our hero brands here to make sure that they have the right resources and right opportunities to scale internationally faster than they would have been able to do themselves. So these are the top five priorities that we centrally are working on and driving throughout our subsidiaries across the group. Thank you everyone for listening in to this presentation and let's do some Q&A.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

Thank you Simon. And yeah, the first question coming in is regarding the inventory buildup during Q1. If we can comment on which segments this inventory buildup is related to and are there any possibilities to say something about price versus volume?

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

So we don't have the price versus volume today for the full group. We have it on the major level for the ones that we have in Power BI, which is 97%. And looking at that, it's almost all volume. We've seen that trend through last year where we went from the beginning of last year, like 2023 in Q1, we had quite a lot of price. But looking at the last six months, it's almost only been volume growth. So that's what I can say about that. About the inventory, as I've already mentioned, Nordic distribution is the major. It's like 80% of the tie up. So there we will have a run through in the inventory. But also on top of that, of course, in the nutrition and if you're just snacking, where we have the additional capacity with the bars, the powders, and in Gras and Fransson where we do the hardball candy and the foam candy, the jelly candy, we need the raw materials because we're almost going to double the output, of course. So that is something that's happening now, but mainly in the distribution segment.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

There's also one question here about if we can comment something on our 2025 goals in terms of how should investors think

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

about them? So the 2025 goals remains in place until we communicate anything different. We are seeing a really, really strong organic growth. And as I mentioned, a lot of the initiatives that we have shown today is something that will add more growth than we have seen historically. We also have an active M&A agenda going forward when we feel that it's a good timing for us in the market in terms of pricing on the acquisitions, but also the pricing of the group. So that's all I can say at this point.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

Thank you, Simon. One question about the list change. If we have any timing about that, can we comment something? So

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

I'll stand with my comment in the CEO letter. I mean, as I said, we've had it as a priority lately now to make sure it happens quickly. But as you understand from the presentation today, it has been a strategic decision for the board and management that those operational initiatives that we have in place that can vastly impact our ability to grow and improve the profitability, it has been more prioritized. But as I said in the CEO letter, we're soon finalized and it shouldn't be too long until we're there. Okay,

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

we got a comment here. Good morning and well done again. Could you quantify something about the Bob Lennon product line? Perhaps you can quantify something about growth or group sales or what we think about it.

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

I mean, as of today, we have zero sales because we haven't launched it yet. But they had some products out in the FMCD market already before we started the initiative with them. And those products have seen tremendous potential. So now we have developed a full line. It's not launched yet, but I think we have around 25 products that we have already sourced and designed together. So I'm hopeful we will be able to see some products before Q2 is finalized out in the markets.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

One of the last questions here, someone is writing, how many groups are run by entrepreneurs who love development and growth? What do we do in order to keep that spirit of the group in the future?

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

I mean, that's always a challenge. But I think a testimony to what we've done is that we haven't lost a single entrepreneur that we feel that we have wanted to keep within the group. And we have very, very low turnover of entrepreneurs. I know a couple of years ago, many investors asked me like, oh, what happens when they earn out to so et cetera. It's not about that. I mean, we are on a journey together with entrepreneurs and we are going to build something fantastic here. So, of course, we need to do our best to be a good owner. But they are also owners being shareholders in the group. And I dare say that our entrepreneurs are really proud to be part of this group. And it hasn't been an issue so far. And if there is somebody that would want to leave, of course, we would have to make a succession. But of the successions we've made so far, I'm not disappointed with any of the cases. So that's not something that we worry about.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

All right. Two more questions. One is regarding the capital development, which level should you expect going forward? I

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

think it's going to be the same as this quarter, like one to two million SEK.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

And lastly, regarding gross money for the group, do you see a continued improvement in Q2 or is it too early to say?

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

I mean, it is too early to say. We are a complex group to monetize despite our really strong systems. We sell more than 37,000 products and it's all about the in-cogs and the prices out. But it is a high priority for all of our companies and it has been for some time now. So I'm hopeful we will be able to improve it. But I can't tell already. What I can tell, and like I wrote in the CEO letter, April has started really, really strong. And usually when we have strong sales growth, we're actually seeing a higher gross margin also. So, you know, unless we have any campaigns driving that, which we are not aware of, I think it should be a positive development. But

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

we'll see. But of course, as we've seen this quarter, we increase the gross margin with 0.4 percentage units. And with a good cost control of the group, that will fall down on the profitability levels as well. So of course, it's a high focus area for us to maintain increasing gross margin.

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

Yeah, and that's also what I'd like to see that we sequentially are able to continuously improve the gross margin quarter by quarter. If we're able to do that for the coming three years, you know, we're going to be a really good place. So that's our focus. Good.

speaker
Johan Lenartsen
CFO

Yeah, we've covered all the questions coming in. So I think we should summarize it there.

speaker
Simon Petrine
CEO

Okay. Thank you, everyone, for listening in. And as always, if you have any further questions, feel free to reach out at any time. Have a great week. Thank you.

Disclaimer

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