Rusta AB (publ)

Welcome to the presentation of Rusta's third quarter, the important months from November until January, including, of course, the Christmas sales. As usual, it will be myself, Göran Westerberg, CEO of Rusta, presenting together with Sofie Malmönger, our CFO. We have a quite simple agenda today. I will take you through a business update where we will go through the results, but also try to explain what has happened during the quarter and also what we believe is ongoing. Sophie will take you through a deep dive in the financial performance and after that we will summarize, we will talk a little bit about current trading and the outlook and then open up for questions and answers. Right, let's start with the business update and as usual I think it's a good idea to have a look at the store network. We're now up to 220 stores in all our markets. We added a new store actually yesterday here in Bro outside Stockholm and we also opened up one new store during the quarter. As we talked about during the last quarterly presentation during our Q2, we changed our guidance for store openings going forward. We're now aiming for 50 to 80 stores in the coming three years. And completely in line with that, we see a continued flowing of new stores in our pipeline. Last time we reported 38 stores. We have since opened up a store and we have now added new ones. We're up to 44 stores in our current pipeline and all markets have got new stores in their list. even Germany and I will come back to the significance of that extra store that is now in the pipeline for Germany. But we're very comfortable with our guidance going forward and we also now expect to enter the territory where this will actually have an impact on our opening rates. So for next quarter we have six stores to open the current Q4 quarter and from there on it will start to increase in pace. Looking at the results of the Christmas sales in November until January, we had increased sales. We reached 7.3% in net sales growth. We had a 4.3% like-for-like growth in local currencies, a gross margin of 43.5% and an EBITDA margin of 11%. And we saw accelerated net sales growth as compared to the Q2 sales growth that we reported last time. So from here on, it seems that we have taken a couple of steps in the right direction and also similar to what we have reported in earlier quarters. This is entirely built by continued volume growth. So in fact, we're actually selling even more. The increase in number of items that we're selling is even higher than the 73% in sales, which is very good for our business model. When we're buying more, the scalability increases and our purchase power also improves. We increased the gross profit by 5.1% and also increased the EBITDA by 3.6%. It's also, I think, important to mention that we started to meet some of last year's IT incident during the quarter. It's for the last nine days during this quarter. And we stand by the guidance that we reported at the time. So I would refer to those numbers. Another thing that affected the quarter was a currency headwind, both on sales and margin. As we have seen, the Swedish crown has strengthened significantly against basically all of our most important trading currencies. Very positive towards the dollar since we're sourcing a lot in US dollars and also affecting our transport. But in the short term, it has also hit us with some headwind on our Norwegian crowns and also in the Euro countries. So affecting some of our top line sales in this quarter, but also our gross margins. Looking at the accumulated situation after three quarters, we're now up to 4.8% net sales growth in Swedish crowns and we have a 2% like for like growth accumulated in local currencies. The gross margin stands at 43.7% and an EBITDA margin of 9.4%. That means that we have an increased gross profit of 5% versus last year and a strengthened EBITDA of 7.4% compared to last year. Looking at what has happened during the quarter, there's a couple of things that I would like to stress here. One is that during Q2, We said that towards the end of the quarter and also in the beginning of this quarter, we saw some early signs of a recovery in Sweden. We felt that that might be the start of a stronger market and hopefully leading into a more positive trajectory. And that has been very much the case during the quarter. We see that Sweden has taken a clear lead now up to double digits sales increases. And we believe the combination of our strong Christmas range, our very strong price position in combination with the regain confidence has been a good mix that has resulted in this increase. And if we look a little bit deeper into what has happened in Sweden, we see both increased footfall, more tickets, more people coming and also buying. But perhaps even more interesting is that for the first time since we hit the inflation shock, we now see that the Swedish customer has started to shop higher ticket items again. If you remember for the past couple of quarters, we have talked a lot about that people have been careful. They have bought lower ticket items. They've also had a higher campaign share in their shopping basket. But here for the first time, we start to see people buying higher ticket items again. It's a bigger share and a growing share of the customer basket. Now, that is good, of course, for mix, but it's also good for us before entering the summer season when we have a larger share of higher ticket items, if you remember. The barbecues, the garden sets, the awnings, all of those things. If we have, as I say, regained confidence at the customers, I think that increases the probability that we will have a good summer season. Similar to last quarter when we saw positive signs for the Swedish consumers, we now start to see the same thing in Norway. We see that Norway is gaining momentum and specifically towards the end of quarter three we started to see a similar behavior in Norway as we saw in Sweden. Now, hopefully, this means that we will have a Norway that is following Sweden closely behind. That remains to be seen, but from where we stand, I think that's a positive sign. At the same time, the positive flip sides of the weaker economy that we've been in remains. So customer recruitment continues. Club Rusta members increased by 12.8% in Q3. So the attractiveness of Rusta continues to be there. People are continuing to stream to us and we also see that in the increased number of tickets during the quarter. We also see a growing social media interest, which has actually boosted some of our products quite well during the Christmas sales and the sales leading up to Christmas. Also, the rental market continues to be favorable, and that has been of course reflected in the increasing pipeline. So from our point of view, the softer rental market, the availability of attractive locations continues to be good. Last time we talked about that, that seems to be the same across the Nordics. Another change during this quarter is that we now start to see the same thing in Germany. So even in Germany, it seems to be easier for us to find the locations we're really after, but also on commercial terms that are acceptable to us. So I think all in all, we expect that the rental market will continue to support our expansion. To continue to follow up a little bit on the more positive outlook that we've had in the Nordics in terms of that, I would also like to say a couple of words on Germany. Before we go into exactly what we're doing right now, I would like to remind you of our approach in Germany. We entered Germany long before we had to. As you are well aware, we have plenty of opportunity to continue to expand and grow in the Nordics, but we have entered Germany because we know that that is a market that is difficult and that will take time. So the reason for us to go in there is because it's Europe's largest discount market. It's a very important low price market, and it's also the key to continental Europe, which it is our vision to continue to expand in. Our strategy has been to build on strengths and focus on similarities, to have one assortment, to have one concept. This is really about continuing to build scalability and our strength, building on the Rusta concept. Our approach has been to be careful. We have a lot of respect for the German market. It isn't easy. So we have quite a low pace of expansion until we feel comfortable and confident that we have a proof of concept. Now, as you see in the map, these are the 10 stores that we are operating today. They are quite clear clusters. We have, say, some in the north, some in the east and some in the west. And we have spent a lot of time now learning from the different sales patterns on these. and not only in different geographical areas of Germany, but also in different type of locations, mall space, but also external retail parks with different neighbors, different neighborhoods and different demographics. So what we have done is that we have evaluated store performance based on type of location, the demographics, is this our core customer, the type of neighbors that we have, the context that we're operating in, how our marketing has worked and also how that has affected both the sales mix and also ticket size and so on. That study has now been concluded and we have now a clearer list of specifications of what exact locations are best for Rusta concept. And the decision was made during the quarter to open up three to five new stores based on these insights. Now, provided these stores develop as expected, we believe that we will have taken a significant step towards proof of concept. There are many other things that we're working with in parallel that also have to be improved. But I think this is the single biggest step that we will take. And if this develops as expected, then I think that would be the door to further expansion into Germany. We presented an extra store, a new store today, earlier in the presentation in Germany, and that is the first of those three to five stores that are fulfilling those demands. Having said all of this, That store won't open tomorrow, it will be opening during next year and we need to have it open for some time to sell to actually see how the trajectory develops. But we are in parallel continuing to look and search for similar locations that are fulfilling all of those new demands And with the softer market in Germany, I feel that I'm quite optimistic. I would say that we will find more stores like this and hopefully also as soon as possible. So we're now really taking a next we're entering the next phase in Germany and taking another step forward. We also are now launching an updated store concept that we're rolling out during this year, during 2025. I think it's also important that we continue to invest in our existing stores. So we have identified a new updated concept because as and when we develop, we launch new product offers, Some are continuing up or are very profitable, some are after a while slowing down in sales and so on. That gives us a reason to update the confidence and reallocate both the space, but also find ways of improving area utilization in our stores. This store concept update will be rolled out to all of our 220 existing stores, plus all the new stores that you saw in the pipeline, the 44 stores that you saw in the pipeline. And this will be on the back of efficiency and also commerciality. So it will also give us a possibility to strengthen our in-store communication and also inspiration. Now, we have done this many times in the past, so we have quite a lot of data of how this affects our sales. And our projection now is that this will give us an extra 1.5% to 2% like-for-like boost over and above what we would otherwise have had. It's a 65 million Swedish crown investment with the payback within a year. And all stores will be completed before the important Christmas sales 2025. With that, I hand over to Sofie to take us through the financial performance.

Yes. Thank you. So, in Rusta's third and largest quarter that stretches from November to January, we have a total net sales growth of 7.3%, negatively affected of 0.3% currency effects. So total net sales growth excluding currency effects were 7.6%. Our like-for-like growth excluding carry-safe effects were 4.3%. We have invested in our price position and decreased our sales prices in Q3, just as in Q2. So the total sales increase is not at all price-driven, it's all volume growth. We have a gross profit that has increased with 5.1% in Q3, but a gross margin that is 0.9 percentage points lower than last year due to negative currency effects and planned campaigning. We still see positive effects of lower purchase prices and have a positive sales mix with a lower share of consumables and a higher share of DIY and leisure products. This has been positive both on sales and gross margin. Just as Jara mentioned, over the past seven quarters we have gradually strengthened our gross margin and we believe it's now on a healthy level. The focus in Q3 has therefore shifted from margin strengthening to sales and gross profit growth. We have prioritized the core of our customer promise, the low price, to thereby drive sales, which we have succeeded with. The accumulated gross margin is 43.7, which is 0.1 percentage points stronger than last year. We have EBITDA growth in this important quarter of 3.6%, mostly driven by increased sales, increased gross profit and good cost control. Our EBITDA margin of 11% is negatively affected by currency with 0.4 percentage points. So a currency neutral EBITDA margin is at 11.4%. We see positive total net sales growth in our two largest segments. Starting with Sweden, we see a continued positive development and are strengthened in our observations from the second quarter that the Swedish consumer has gradually regained confidence, which has contributed to good Christmas sales and an increase in sales of products with higher price points, just as Göran mentioned. We have positive cost development in the quarter for Sweden, where OPEX as a share of sales is lower than last year. The EBITDA margin for Sweden is 20.5%, an increase of 0.2 percentage points. Accumulated, we have an EBITDA margin increase of 0.6 percentage points. Our segment for Norway has sales growth of 7.3%, despite meeting high double-digit sales increases in the same quarter last year. The EBITDA for Norway in local currency is pretty much in line with last year, but the EBITDA margin of 15.8% is lower and is mostly explained by negative currency effects due to a weaker NOC. Towards the end of the third quarter, the Norwegian customer began to show the same signs of recovery that we saw in Sweden during the previous quarter with an increased average ticket. Other markets have a decrease in net sales in the third quarter, and this is due to strong comparables last year and a hesitant market development in Germany in particular. Net sales growth excluding currency effects is minus 0.4%, but we have a positive like-for-like of 0.6%. Operating costs in relation to sales have decreased during the quarter for other markets, which is explained by good cost control. The EBITDA margin decreased during the quarter to 3.6 from 4.1, which is mainly explained by a lower gross margin due to negative currency effects and continue high sales of campaign items. Accumulated, the EBITDA margin is 0.4 percentage points higher than last year. We have positive profit development and an increased EBITDA of 3.6% in the quarter. If we look at the EBITDA bridge, you will see that we have higher sales where volume is the single largest driver to the overall growth. As I mentioned earlier, we have continued to reduce our sales prices during the quarter due to the shift to more planned campaigning. So the sales increase is not at all price or inflation driven. It's a volume growth due to more customers and more receipts. We also have a positive product mix development. We still see positive effects of improved purchase prices and an increased share of private label. However, the negative effects of a higher dollar and the weaker NOC in the quarter had a strong negative impact. We also have higher sea freight costs in the quarter. OPEX, as a share of our sales, has decreased with 0.3 percentage points, which is very positive. The total currency effect on our EBITDA margin, as mentioned earlier, is negative with 0.4%. So a currency-neutral EBITDA margin is at 11.4%. Thanks to the scalability and the positive leverage in our business model, we have a very positive development in both net profit and in the profit per share, which is growing at a higher pace than the EBITDA, both in the quarter and accumulated. Accumulated, we have an increase in profit per share of 9.9%. And then some comments on our balance sheet and cash flow. The increase in working capital is explained by higher inventory value, which is partly due to a too low inventory value last year when we could not receive the goods in the warehouse during the IT incident. This explains about a third of the higher inventory value compared to last year. We have a low net debt excluding IFRS 16 of 54 million SEK. Cash flow from operating activities in the quarter is lower than last year and is explained by higher purchases of goods this year compared to last year. This is a planned inventory build-up due to more stores and increased demand. The deviation is also explained by the too low comparable inventory value last year due to the IT incident that I just mentioned. Cash flow from investment activities for the quarter amounted to 50 million SEK compared to 23 million SEK last year. The increase is explained by the automation project in our warehouse, new stores and rebuilt stores. As for the automation in the central warehouse, it's all going well according to plan and budget and is expected to be ready in spring 26. So all in all, we continue to have a solid balance sheet and a very stable financial position, which will support our increased store expansion. We have no need for bank loans and we will fully finance our growth ourselves, completely in line with our set financial targets. And with that, it's your turn. It's my turn again?

Right. This does not respond there there. OK, right so a little bit of summary and outlook so. I think first and foremost, we have Sweden continues to be in the lead. We had a double digit growth over there and we're really happy that what we saw during quarter two has continued well into this quarter. We also saw Norway picking up, which I think is very positive. Hopefully that will continue. And I would say the thing now that we are struggling with a bit is the exchange rates volatility in the long run. It's good. A stronger Swedish crown. versus the U.S. dollar is very positive for us, positive for margins and also, of course, for pricing. But in the short run, we have some headwind in our sales market in Euroland and in Norway. And that is something that we're now working very hard with to mitigate both through price adjustments, but also, most importantly, with productivity increases. If we look at current trading after the quarter ended, February showed strong sales across all segments. And this is very encouraging, of course. That means that Sweden, Norway, Finland and Germany showed a good level, another step up from what we have seen during quarter three. And it's a combination of increased visitation and also increased average ticket. So I think that's something that we like to see, and hopefully that continues during the quarter. Having said that, of course, April is a very important month during our last quarter. It stands for about 40% of our total sales. But from where we stand, looking at the behavior and looking at the development, I think it's a good starting point. So and all in all, I mean, we have, as Sophie was into, we have we have a strong balance sheet. We are financially sound and we're putting our money into good work. So we are investing in new stores with the increasing pipeline of new stores. We will continue to search and look for good locations on good commercial terms. And we will be looking across all of our markets. And as I said, Even in Germany, it seems to be more of a softer rental market, which is good for us. We're also investing in our existing stores to drive the like-for-like growth. And among other things, what we do now is this big program where we're rolling out a new updated concept in all of our 220 stores this year. And we're also investing in supply chain efficiency in various ways, And one of those important ways is the investment that we're doing in our distribution centrally in Norrköping. So I think we're working with a multifaceted strategy to support new growth, to support our old stores and also to support our efficiency. So I think all in all, we're in a volatile world. But from where I stand and when I look towards the horizon, I generally like what I see within Rusta. I think we are heading in a good direction. So with that, I would like to open up for questions and answers.