Pricer AB (publ)

Good afternoon and welcome to the Pricer first quarter 2026 earnings presentation and Q&A session. We are today joined by CEO Magnus Larsson and CFO Claes Wenzel, who will present the first quarter and take questions. With that said, I hand over the word.

Thank you very much, Hjalmar. I'm extremely happy to do the presentation here today together with Claes. Now I'm in London. I'm at the Retail Tech Show. It's a two-day show. It's been very interesting, so I'm doing it now from my hotel room, so I hope it's okay. Claes, next slide, please. Our vision is to be the preferred partner for in-store communication and digitalization. And I think what we will see in some of the presentations today is how we're moving in that direction. We see a lot of traction with Plaza. I haven't updated all the stores that we won in the quarter on this slide, but it's been quite a few. We have now more than 55 million labels from active customers that we managed on Plaza. So we have seen very good progress, especially on Plaza now in this quarter. So next slide, please. So, Q1 highlights. What are the highlights? Of course, there's always a mix of fantastic things and some things that are a little bit less fantastic. I think the first thing I'm really happy to state is that we have had good run rate business in almost all markets. And it's been fueled by a stable growth of order intake from our existing customers and some new customers as well. We haven't had any of those major groundbreaking deals this quarter. But we have had a continuous flow that has been extremely positive. And we can see that one of the companies, as you will see from the CEO word in the report, is that Canada was a little bit less, but that's from our point of view is also expected. We have had a really good deployment with Canadian Tire. They are now almost fully deployed within their own brand. our own banner. And we have good discussions moving on further, but this was expected. So Canada is still very hot. I would also like to highlight the growth that we've had in Scandinavia. After the shift from resale mode into direct sales mode, we can now see the full effect of this change. We have had really good order intake on the Scandinavian market, so we speak about Sweden, we speak about Norway. We can also see that we have improved profitability on these deals, so it's been something. It took a little bit longer than I was hoping for, but now when we have it in place, it's really, really good. We have built... We've always had a relationship with these customers that we sold to our resellers, but now we have a different kind of relationship where I see that our chances of doing more business, helping them to be more successful with new products, it has definitely increased. From a financial performance, we deliver the highest gross margin since 2020. And we can actually see that even though we had a slightly lower net sales in the quarter versus last quarter, we deliver a gross profit that is actually higher in absolute terms than we had last year. And it's of course connected to this gross margin. We have continued strong cash flow. We have improved our cash position, as you will see in Claes' presentation a little bit later. And we turned our net profitability from loss last year, Q1, to a profit this year. In the quarter, we also announced that the exclusive supply agreement that we have with Carrefour has been terminated. It will result in lower volumes with Carrefour. But also, as a reminder, when we look at the potential impact, last year, the contribution from Carrefour to our gross profit was, as I put it here, mid-single digit. And we do expect that for this year, the impact will only be low single digits. So it will be very low expected impact. One thing that has also been very positive is that when I look on especially the French independent stores in France specifically, we have actually had a very good order uptake in this quarter compared to last quarter. It's actually been very good. And it's something that we can see also continuing after the announcement that our exclusivity has been changed. Why is this positive? Of course, it's positive because we sell more. But above all, it's positive because Carrefour is targeting to transfer somewhere around 50 stores every single year from owned and operated to a franchisee set up. So we will continue to work with the franchisees in France, just like in the other markets where we have a relationship with Carrefour. So it's been a very positive sign. Next slide, please, Claus. So the retail industry insights and macro trends, for those of you that have been regulars on these presentations, you've seen the slide. I will now speak a little bit about Sobis and about Avenue. Sobis will be very much about area one, actually, the strategic digitalization of the stores, which is one of the key reasons why we are engaging with them when they are engaging with us and we work together. The other one would be the evolution of the in-store experience, which is really the Avenue track. So let's go to the next slide and talk a little bit about Sobis deal. So as you might know, we have now signed an agreement together with Geratech and Sobis for the deployment of 300 to 350 stores. It's a 51 million US dollar agreement. So we actually have an agreement, and the order intake we will take continuously quarter by quarter. So there will not be a $51 million order, but we have a commitment on this volume to be delivered over the coming 18 months. And I think it's good to go back to actually the history. Back in June, we announced that an undisclosed tier one grocery retailer ordered 50 stores. Actually, what they did was 50, and from their point of view, it was 50 pilot stores. They really wanted to validate the performance and the value, but also set it up to see can we industrialize the deployment in a way that would make sense to us. And after then a couple of months, we continued the discussion, which led to the order that we announced December 24 of deployment of 5 million ESLs. So from our point of view, it's like the first deployment wave. The first one was a pilot store wave. This is the first real deployment. So, of course, it's extremely positive now that we have agreed to now do the next wave, big wave of the deployments. So we have 1,500 stores, give or take. It's pharmacies, but it's mainly groceries. A lot of different formats. Some of them are owned by Sobis, and those are the orders that you see on this slide. Some of them are franchisee-based. So on top of this last year, we did a lot of the franchisees, and we still have a lot of interest also from the franchisees. So that's not included in this agreement that we have. They have, of course, the right to utilize this agreement, but it's not part of the $51 million agreement. Discussing with Sobis, they have an interest to do this as fast as possible. So the deployment speed will very much be connected to the ability to deploy in the stores. That will sort of be the limiting factor. But when we speak to the executives of Sobis, they are very clear. We want it done as fast as possible. So let's see how fast this will go. Then next slide, please, Klaas. Pricer Avenue. I've talked a lot about it now. We can see some more traction. We have started the official deliveries and installation of the newly launched avenue. We have the first stores installed. For those of you living in Stockholm area, you will find stores in Stockholm now with Avenue. We are working together with the store owners. We are working with some of their brands. Which has been a really key point. We do not want to launch Avenue as just another beautiful ESL, because it is a beautiful ESL. To us, this is about merchandise. We want to make sure that any of our customers using Avenue, they should make more money. That's the entire objective of Avenue, not to only beautify the store. It should be tangible business. And of course, then we need to have a proof point. So now in Q2, I think it will be in May, or sorry, in June, We will do AB testing now. So we have one store where we'll do is we have ESLs and then we have one stores with Avenue to actually be able to see what is the uptake in sale we get when we do merchandise on Avenue. So this will be a very important test. We will do more of those to also be able to go to our customers and listen, you should really do Avenue. Because it will help you get more customer attention. You will get more sales. And you will be able to sell this now to also your suppliers. So we're focusing also much of these discussions on the supplier in the fast-moving consumer goods world. And finally, of course, I said that it's a beautiful ESL. And it has been recognized now by good design. It's priced from the Chicago... I won't even bother to try to pronounce it, Athenium Museum of Architecture and Design and the Metropolitan Arts Press. It's one of these old and really prestigious awards programs. And we have been winner now in the category green products. When we were now, what it is planning to also Polestar, the Swedish car, we're also given a price from the good design. So it is one of those prices you really want to have. And maybe now it's time for Klaus. I think it's your next slide is yours.

Yes, and as you can see here, sales are down 40 million compared to last year. But if you take into account that the US dollar is down compared to last year with about 10% and the euro about 5%, we should otherwise have been on the same level as last year. and one other and maybe the most important thing here is of course even through sales are down eight percent the gross profit is higher and that is due to the better margin which is an effect from plaza and also a better product mix And we also took a decision now in April to cut the cost, and we will, from the second half, save about 17 million per year related to this cost cut we've just been doing. Then if we look at the cash flow, we have a strong cash flow in the quarter. With an EBIT of 11 million, we achieved an operating cash flow of 53 million and increased our liquidity with 33 million in the quarter. So now we have 341 million in cash. And then, of course, we have the bond of 300, but we also have unused credit facilities of 150 million. So we have a strong balance sheet now when we have good control over our operating capital now. And then if you look at the sales and the gross profit, you can see it's similar compared to a quarter ago, but then you should also have in mind here the currency effect we now had in the first quarter for about 38-40 million on the top line. All right, thank you.