Bang & Olufsen A/S (BO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Bang & Olufsen Full Year and Q4 Financial Presentation for 2024-2025. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded. And I will now hand the call over to your speakers. Please begin.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. With me today is our CFO, Nikolaj Wendelbo. I will begin by outlining our key highlights for the past year and providing an overview of our business performance as it aligns to our strategy. Following that, Nikolaj will take us through the financials and our outlook in more detail. I will then offer some closing remarks before we open the session for questions. Please move to the next slide. Q4 highlights, a year of transition, achieving record high gross margin, positive operating profit and strengthened branded channel performance is the headline. So let us begin by looking at our fourth quarter and full year performance. Overall, during this past year of transition, we have been focused on continued efforts to build a solid foundation for the future and ensure a resilient business as we move ahead with our strategic plans. In quarter 4, '24/'25, product sales delivered revenue growth of 9%, which led to our revenue increasing by 4% during the quarter despite a decline in brand partnering. This meant that we landed at minus 1% in revenue for the full year in local currencies, closing the year in accordance with our initial outlook. We continued the upward trajectory for our gross margin, once again achieving a record high gross margin of 55.8% in quarter 4, leading to a gross margin of 55% for the full year. The EBIT margin of 1% for the year is mainly due to an increase in OpEx investments as part of our strategy acceleration. Free cash flow ended at DKK 16 million. The positive level was mainly due to timing and collection efforts at the end of the year. Looking at sell-out numbers, we delivered an overall increase of 4% year-on-year, largely driven by a 9% growth in branded channels, which covers company-owned and monobrand stores and e-commerce. Like-for-like sell-out growth for the full year was fueled by growth in Europe and in the Americas, while APAC decreased by 1%. Our 4 win-cities collectively reported solid sell-out growth of 30% year-on-year and 38% for quarter 4, with all cities reporting double-digit growth. With our capital resource at DKK 600 million at year-end, following the capital raise and the refinancing and increase of our revolving credit facility, the funding secured will be used for value-creating investments, helping us realize profitable growth. Please move to the next slide. And now we're moving into the strategy update. We have made positive progress with our strategic acceleration while also improving our company and financial stability, and we laid a lot of groundwork in '24, '25. We have 4 pillars under our Luxury, Timeless, Technology strategy that are critical building blocks to help us accelerate profitable growth. These pillars are brand positioning, channel development, elevated product portfolio and partnership expansion. Our focus on brand positioning is all about elevating our brand and global awareness. Our marketing strategy focuses on strategic priority areas. Firstly, deepening our cultural relevance through global aligned campaigns that are locally activated, high-impact storytelling and best practice 360 activations, that all contribute to commercial impact. Secondly, we are prioritizing data-driven decision-making to optimize customer acquisition and build even deeper relationships through personalization and scale clienteling to drive long loyalty. This approach is designed to strengthen our connection with our communities and international audiences, and ensure that Bang & Olufsen brand is synonymous with timeless luxury. Our focus on channel development ensures the continued attention to elevating our branded retail network. Our aim is to drive growth across win cities by optimizing our retail network and expanding our presence in key cities globally while guaranteeing our in-store experiences and have 2 luxury feel in line with customer expectations. Our focus on elevated product portfolio reflects our delivery of the best product experiences that are timeless, collectible and redefining categories. We continue to push the boundaries of what technology can achieve in terms of sound, design and longevity. We create iconic design and craftsmanship with superior acoustic performance across a seamlessly connected product portfolio. And this unique combination is what positions us as the forefront of luxury audio. Under this area, we're also focusing on our Atelier program for those clients who are looking for pieces that are completely unique to them. We will invest more resources into our product creation and engineering to ensure we can deliver on our existing platform and portfolio road map. Our focus on partnership expansion has a particular emphasizes on growth of our licensing partnerships, which today covers premium order experiences for TV and automotive sound systems, through the dedicated Audio by Bang & Olufsen proposition with potential to expand to wider categories. These 4 focus areas are, of course, underpinned by a robust business foundation. We continue to strengthen the backbone of the business by improving systems and processes, and ensuring end-to-end integration. We believe that combined with a strong focus on our people and capabilities, and our work to shape a client-focused organization, we will support our growth journey. If you can now move on to the next slide, we will look at some key progress points for '24, '25. As mentioned, we have made positive progress and believe that we are now standing on a strong foundation for our strategy acceleration. We are pleased to continue the uptick in gross margin to a record high 55%, having generated a gross margin of above 50% over the last consecutive 9 quarters since Q4 '22, '23. We have also been improving the underlying quality of revenue through the optimization of our retail network, growing the share and improving the performance of our branded channels and reducing the presence of our multi-brand network. In November 2024, we completed a capital raise with net proceeds of DKK 217 million, which was a critical step for our growth plans become more fully realized. In addition, by refinancing and increasing our revolving credit facility in May 2025 to DKK 300 million, we brought our total capital resources to DKK 600 million at year-end. Please move to the next slide. Turning to our first pillar, reinforcing our position as a culturally relevant brand within the luxury audio market has continued to be a key priority for the year as we continue to pursue strong collaborations with like-minded partners. And as part of our continued partnership with Ferrari, we delivered a second special edition Ferrari collection in October with 3 new product collaboration and a major order collection that creates an unmissable connection between Bang & Olufsen and the motorsport icon. Our partnership with the Yacht maker Riva, which is focused on shared excellence in artisanship and performance resulted in 2 exclusive product collaborations, the Beosound A5 and Beosound 2. We have been very proud to have prominent F1 driver Charles Leclerc representing our brand as our global brand ambassador for 2024 and 2025, and to collaborate on a fast-selling limited edition of our H100 headphone. Through strong collaborations with prestigious partners in the luxury sector, we meet one of our key strategic priorities to deepen and broaden our audience engagement while expanding our customer base. In support of this, we also delivered a series of locally anchored events serving as powerful touch points to connect with new audiences, strengthen existing relationships and amplify brand visibility in key markets. Please turn to the next slide. Turning to our second pillar, channel development. This year, we have been concentrating on retail excellence, ensuring our global retail channel or more intentionally curated for luxury customer experiences. This has meant progressing on our plan to close, relocate and open new stores. Key actions for '24, '25 have been the optimization of the EMEA network while expanding our footprint across APAC and Americas preparing for several planned store openings for 2025, '26. In total, we reduced the number of monobrand stores by 41 net with this network now compromising 346 stores globally at year-end after 15 new store openings, 9 uplift, 7 relocations over the past year. We also continued the more selective approach towards multi-brand channels and reduced the number of multi-brand stores. With a strategic city focus, we are pleased to report strong performance in our Win City concept with 30% sellout growth total and 38% for Q4 alone. We have initiated the Win City concept also in L.A. and Tokyo, and we roll out the concept to more cities in the future. We have also been able to enhance our store experience through refreshed visual merchandising improved store design and dedicated staff training across client touch points, ensuring a luxury service. Our main priority for these spaces is to create magical moments and experiences for our clients. Through new openings and uplifts, we elevate our branded network. The opening of our new flagship store in Milan, in the prestigious retail avenue, Corso Matteotti and the recent upgrade to our space in Harrods London, are a testament to this. We are crafting spaces with meticulous attention to detail, timeless craftmanship and showcasing personal services such as Atelier, ensuring that there are destinations that act as true expression of our brand and our values that will be a visit to joy. For us, product excellence and longevity is a consistent pursuit. To reflect these ambitions, a range of new product innovations were launched this year. The H100, our new flagship headphone with our highest quality sound to date were our first on-the-go product built on our own proprietary software platform, Amadeus, showcasing our software expertise. This platform will be critical for our future product pipeline. We also launched Beoplay 11, the next generation of the successful Beoplay EX air phones, Beosound A1 third generation, a reimagining of our award-winning Bluetooth speaker, and Beosystems 3000 and the third release in our recreated classic series, which gives iconic products a second life through restoration, remanufacturing and reinterpretation. A luxury bespoke offer Atelier was introduced, designed to cater clients looking for pieces more personalized and unique to them than ever before. Throughout this program, we give our clients the opportunity to create custom-made products in collaboration with our master artisans in Struer. Clients can choose from over 500,000 possible combinations or materials and finishes, and we can create completely one-off creations too. We wanted the special experience for our clients to reflect our legacy of unmatched sound and personal expression. We also continued our circularity journey, which is critical to our pursuit of luxury timeless technology, achieving creators to trader certifications for 6 products this year, including H100 and the Beosound Theatre, which was the first soundbar in the world to achieve this. These results take us up to a total of 8 certified products, which we are very proud of and we'll continue to focus on as an integrated part of our approach to product design. Let's move to the next slide. Under our final pillar, we focused on powering growth through our strategic business partnerships and licensing. And in '24, '25 secured new important partnerships. Predominantly, our 6-year technology licensing partnership with TCL will be key for elevating the order experiences in TCL's premium TV portfolio through our Audio by Bang & Olufsen proposition. Considering TCL's wide reach as one of the largest consumer electronic companies in the world, we consider this a very impactful long-term partnership, and this is a positive indication of the scale and type of partnerships we could -- would like to continue developing in the future. We also expanded the HARMAN automotive partnership to the Hyundai Group introducing Audio by Bang & Olufsen in car proposition, and are looking forward to combining Hyudai's tech forward vision with our expertise in digital audio. Overall, we have continued to focus on further developing our technology propositions to expand our offerings also to the hospitality industry. Please move to the next slide. Underpinning the 4 pillars that we just outlined is a commitment to making sure that all these products and experiences are developed and delivered responsibly, not only to make sure that we are creating -- what we are creating as a timeless longevity but also to reduce our environmental impact. This year, our integrated annual reporting aligns to the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting directive, and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards for the first time. The overview of our achievements and path forward is comprehensive. So here, we are delighted to also share selected highlights from our full year sustainability efforts. Firstly, for climate change. We continue to make tangible progress towards our climate commitments, which is anchored in our science-based targets and Net Zero by 2040 ambition. We made measurable improvements across operations, value chain collaborations and product innovation, which led us to achieve a reduction in our emission across Scopes 1, 2 and 3. As part of this work, we achieved our 100% renewable electricity target a year ahead of schedule. Secondly, we advanced our circularity agenda with meaningful results across design, certification, innovation and advocacy. This progress supports our ambition to lead the consumer electronics industry towards a more regenerative future, and it becomes an increasingly intuitive part of our work. Among other achievements during '24/'25 financial year, we were particularly proud that 6 new products were Cradle-to-Cradle certified at Bronze level bringing our certified portfolio to 8 products. And we expanded our recreated classic program with the launch of the Recreated Beosystem 3000 turn table, continuing the remanufacturing of iconic legacy products to extend their life span and reduce waste. Our overall goal is to create long-term environmental business value through the integration of circular design within all stages of our product development. Moving on to the next slide. Moving from -- now from last year's success to looking ahead to an incredible milestone. On November 17, this year, Bang & Olufsen turns 100 years, and we will celebrate the century at the forefront of audio, luxury audio. To honor this special milestone, we will run an extensive global campaign that will unveil a new look and feel of the brand and will spotlight our excellence in sound. We will curate brand experiences and continue to showcase our retail excellence while adding iconic pieces to our luxury product portfolio. We are filled with enthusiasm for the future. With globally resonance and tenure campaign and the focus plan, we will elevate brand perception, grow awareness and turn cultural impact into commercial value. With the foundation already in place, we are now scaling brand-led growth with a focus on meeting our audiences where they are based through our retail excellence initiatives, an elevated product offering, deeper customer relationships and globally consistent storytelling. I will now hand over to Nikolaj to take us through our outlook and financial results more in detail.

Thank you, Kristian. Now please move to Page 15. Now let me start by taking you through our Q4 performance in more detail. In Q4, our like-for-like sell-out grew by 7% compared to last year. Growth was seen across regions and for branded channels, like-for-like sell-out grew by 8%. For our win cities, sell-out grew by 38% with double-digit growth across all the 4 cities. Like-for-like sell-out in EMEA grew by 5%. Branded channels generate sell-out growth, supported by double-digit growth from our company-owned stores. Sell-out in the Americas grew by 20%. The branded channels combined reported double-digit growth year-on-year across all product categories, while sell-out in eTail declined. Please note that the like-for-like sell-out growth excludes the California stores, while they are included in the comparison figures on revenue growth. For the APAC region, like-for-like sell-out grew by 6% and driven by double-digit growth of branded channels. In China, like-for-like sell-out declined by 4%, sell-out from the monobrand channel declined single digits. Across regions, like-for-like sell-out for the state category grew by 2%, while Flexible Living declined by 2%, and on the go category grew by 29%. This mainly reflected the change in channel mix for our branded channels as well as the performance of our 3 launches in the on the go category. Please move to the next page. Reported revenue for the quarter was DKK 680 million. This was an increase of 4% in local currencies compared to Q4 of last year. We are pleased to see that growth rates improved quarter-by-quarter throughout the year. The increase in reported revenue can be attributed to an increase in product sales of 9%, while brand partnering and other activities experienced a decline of 21% in local currencies. The development in product revenue was driven by reported growth of 14% in branded channels. The stage category grew by 3%, mainly driven by increased revenue from TVs and sound bars. Flexible Living declined 3%. Last year, Beosound had a strong performance due to the Faba collection which was partly offset by higher sales of Beosound A5 and A9. The on the go category increased by 31%. Growth was mainly driven by the successful launch of H100, Beoplay Eleven and A1 third Generation. The decline to DKK 82 million in brand partnering and other activities was mainly due to lower revenue from co-branded products and an expected fall in license income from HP though partly offset by increased revenue from automotive. We continued the planned ramp-up of the TCL license partnership. Please turn to the next page. Now moving to revenue per region. Revenue from the EMEA region grew by 9% in local currencies and growth was reported across all branded channels in the regions. Revenue grew across most of the European markets, although Germany saw a decline in revenue due to lower market momentum. The gross margin was up 1.3 percentage points to 50.9%. In the Americas, revenue grew by 3% in local currencies, driven by double-digit growth from company-owned stores in e-com. The growth level also reflects some partner hesitance in the U.S. The monobrand channel declined due to a strong quarter in Q4 of last year and uncertainty related to tariffs, which is an area we are monitoring closely going into the new financial year. The gross margin decreased by 1.3 percentage points to 48.7% adjusting for tariff costs, the gross margin was overall flat in the Americas. Revenue in APAC was DKK 182 million, which is an increase of 13% in local currencies. Revenue from our Chinese market grew by 7% in local currencies and account for approximately 46% of total revenue in APAC. In late April, we took over the online flagship store on the eTail platform Tmall. Thus, we are now operating the 2 largest retail platforms in China directly, which we expect will improve the overall brand control and performance in the market. Overall, for the APAC region, the gross margin grew to 54.7%, up 2.9 percentage points from Q4 last year. Please move to the next page. On group level, the gross margin rose to a record high of 55.8% and was up 1.5 percentage points compared to last year. The gross margin for product sales was 51.7%, an increase from 50.2% while the gross margin for Brand Partnering increased to 84.9% due to a higher share of license income. EBIT margin before special items was 1% compared to 1.8% in Q4 last year. Please turn to the next page. Moving on to capacity cost and net working capital. Capacity costs decreased by DKK 5 million year-on-year. Looking at the composition of capacity costs, development costs increased by DKK 12 million. The incurred development costs before capitalization ratio was 16.7% compared to 15.6% last year. Distribution and marketing costs decreased by DKK 21 million, and our marketing cost ratio was 8.7% compared to 10% last year. Administrative costs increased by DKK 4 million driven by employee bonus accrual at year-end. Net working capital decreased by DKK 39 million during the quarter to DKK 216 million. Trade receivables increased by DKK 79 million and payables increased by DKK 132 million due to higher activity and timing of payments. The improved net working capital over the past 2 years is mainly due to our focus on branded channels and reduced inventory levels. Inventory increased by DKK 34 million during the quarter to DKK 447 million which was in line with last year. Over the last 3 years, we have seen an inventory reduction of DKK 182 million. Please move to the next page. Free cash flow for Q4 was DKK 4 million and declined by DKK 39 million compared to last year. The positive level was primarily due to timing of payments and connection efforts at year-end. CapEx was DKK 86 million for Q4, and mainly related to intangible assets and investments in new products and platforms. The increased level was expected. And going forward, we expect further increases with more retail related CapEx in the mix. Capital resources amounted to DKK 600 million at the end of Q4, of which available liquidity was DKK 350 million. This was driven by the record issue of net DKK 217 million received in December '24 and the refinancing an increase of our revolving credit facility. Please turn to the next page. Before I present the outlook for '25, '26, I would like to give a bit of detail on how we currently see tariff levels are impacting our business. For the recent quarter, we saw an impact of around DKK 3 million. which also equals the full year effect. For the year, revenue in the Americas was around 12% of total revenue. Our production spans globally with the majority of production in China and in Europe and a small share in other Asian countries. Looking at the Americas revenue, we can estimate around 1/3 of the sales from products produced in Europe and 2/3 produced in China. We do not have any production in the U.S. We have assessed an approximate impact on an annual basis. We're looking into different scenarios depending on the outcome of the current tariff negotiations with deadline this week for Europe and next month for China. We have estimated a gross tariff cost impact of up to DKK 40 million, which our outlook is based on. I have to stress that this unknown territory that we are navigating in and any assessment would be subject to uncertainties. We have mitigated the estimated gross tariff costs through price increases implemented on first of May and first of June. In addition, our margin structures with our U.S. dealers have been adjusted and these mitigations -- but these mitigations are, however, very uncertain as the impact on demand is unknown. And in addition, the impact from tariffs on the global economy could be severe. If our estimation is correct, the net impact on our gross margin is negative with around 0.5 to 1.0 percentage points. We're also looking into further mitigating actions such as looking at our supply chain and our production setup. Now please move to the next page. So moving to the outlook for the financial year 2025/'26, the challenging macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties seem to persist and navigating ongoing change will remain a key priority for us. We will closely monitor to the tariff changes and market developments in the coming period while staying focused on the next step of strategic acceleration. Overall, we are affected by higher uncertainty than last year when we published the outlook for '24 '25. In particular, in terms of tariffs and the outlook for the U.S. market in general, we are currently seeing some hesitance and concerns from our dealers. Despite uncertainty, we remain focused on the execution of our strategy. As we have previously mentioned, our midterm plan includes an ambitious plan for store openings, uplift relocations and closings in '25,'26 and we expect these initiatives to drive growth in especially the second half of the midterm period. Within our outlook, we assume the launch of 3 or more products in the coming year. While being fewer than in previous years, we believe that there will be key drivers of growth, mainly in the second half of the year. The outlook for '25/'26 is as follows: Revenue growth is expected to be in the range of 1% to 8%. EBIT margin before special items is expected to range from minus 3% to plus 1%, the free cash flow is expected to be in the range of minus DKK 100 million to 0. With the proceeds from the capital raise, we will continue the investment program of strategic execution. In addition to channel development, we will invest further in our product portfolio, our software development and increased marketing spend. This means that CapEx is expected to increase to around DKK 320 million to DKK 360 million. And capacity costs are expected to increase as well by around DKK 150 million compared to '24, '25. And before I hand back to Kristian for closing remarks, let me also briefly update you that in the year ahead, we will be making a formal change to our reporting for '25,'26. We will move into a trading statement approach for Q1 and Q3 and which will, of course, still be supported by our usual webcast. For the half year and full year results, our reporting will remain as today. Now back over to you, Kristian.

Thank you, Nikolaj. So let me summarize our presentation today. We saw a strong Q4 with a revenue increase of 4% during the quarter, which meant we ended the year with a total revenue of minus 1% in line with our initial outlook. We were pleased to once again achieve a record high gross margin of 55.8% in Q4 and a positive EBIT margin. Our 4% increase in like-for-like sell-out year-on-year was largely driven by growth in branded channels. And we were delighted to see solid collective performance across our win cities. Over the past year, we have made solid progress with our strategic acceleration, including optimization of our retail network and building strong partnerships that will maximize our business and customer offer as well as our overall luxury brand position. Despite the need to navigate ongoing market uncertainties in the year ahead, we look forward to implementing value-creating investments to keep building momentum. Our luxury timeless technology strategy will help us to realize Bang & Olufsen's growth potential as we step into our next century on a strong foundation as the world's leading luxury audio brand. I would like to thank our employees, partners, suppliers, brand ambassadors customers and clients for their continued support and trust in B&O. And we'll now go into the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Niels Leth from DNB.

So Nikolaj, on the gross margin outlook for next year, you mentioned that tariffs is expected to have a negative effect of half to 1 percentage point. So would you say that's also the absolute gross margin development that we should be looking into for the coming years, so a decline of 0.5 to 1 percentage point? Secondly, could you be talking -- could you talk a little bit about the phasing of growth for the coming year. So should we expect that a slow beginning to the year followed by a stronger ending? And then just finally, what's the effect of the in-sourcing of your retail administration in the U.S. on your APAC?

So thank you, Niels. So first of all, in terms of gross margin development, we are not guiding on gross margin. So that's going to be my first comment. But the impact we are expecting from the tariff of between 0.5 and 1 percentage point. We feel still leave rooms for an overall expansion of the gross margin in next year or this year that we are entering now as well. The price increases that we have done together with our continued focus on expanding in branded channels, as well as the products that we are launching during the year will also be launched at gross margins that are higher than our sort of general product portfolio on average, and the products that they potentially are replacing. So it's our aim to consider continued expansion in gross margin. I think the main risk to this calculation around is that we don't know where the tariffs will end. The assumptions we have is that the tariff cost will end in a place where the price increases that we have already implemented and the other mitigating actions that we have are enough. But if we end up in a situation where -- let's just say we go back to 145% tariffs from China, then we have a different situation. And then we would also be much more tricky and difficult to expand to see expansion of the gross margin as well. So I think really what's going to come out of these negotiations between U.S. and EU and U.S. and China is going to determine how we're going to see that. But right now, we don't know anything about that other than what we can read in the press. So anything on that is speculation at this point in time.

So the DKK 40 million is based on 30% tariff?

Based on -- it's based on the current 30% to 37% tariff that we see in China and with room to also cover a small increase in that. And in Europe, it's based on the situation that we had on tariffs before the 90-day stands still, which is a 20% situation. So that's how we are -- that's what we have built in of assumptions. Then around phasing of growth we should definitely think about the second half of the year growing much more than the first half of the year. This is, first of all, is, of course, always a quarter of less activity. But secondly, the products that we are launching will come in, in the second half of the year or at least in the second half of Q2. So that's what you should expect. I don't think I can give more precise details to that, but that's the expectations on the phasing. Did you have one more question or...

Yes.

So yes, on eTail and Tmall, so we expect that we will be able to grow the Tmall business overall compared to what we saw last year with 2 factors. One of them being that we're going from having wholesale revenue on the platform to having the retail revenue in our books. And secondly, because we feel we can drive more business in the right way. So we expect that to help the Chinese market come into a growth situation for next year. Then, of course, what's happening in the Chinese economy or may give us headwinds as well. But when we look at sort of all else being equal on Tmall, that should help us grow the Chinese business in this year.

And just as a question on your future trading statements, do you expect to announced revenue in quarter 1 and quarter 3? Or would it only be a written statement on the business development?

We expect to announce revenue. We also expect to announce earnings as well. And a lot of the data points that you're getting today, but we will -- the written format will be shortened down to basically 2 pages instead of today where they are 15 pictures written. So I think you will still feel that you are getting the same -- a lot of the same information that you're getting today, but we are shortening the writing down and so we can a little bit in Q2 and full year on our strategic developments.

The next question is from Poul Jessen from Danske Bank.

First, a follow-up on Niel's question about phasing on the year. Isn't it fair to assume that the new product launches you're coming will be ahead of your anniversary in November? So it will be late Q1 or during Q2?

Yes. Maybe I start, we don't want to give precise guidance on the portfolio development. But of course, we will make something exciting for the anniversary.

Then about -- I just shoot from in here on the CapEx increase by about DKK 100 million year-over-year. Can you put a little on is that the R&D capitalization? Is it company-owned stores? Or where is the additional money being spent?

So CapEx, yes, so the additional money is being spent on both. So it's both R&D capitalizations and more investments into our products. but is equally an increase in the spend on retail development. So we expect in the coming year to open and uplift more stores during the year. We already announced that we are opening more stores in California together with a partner. And part of that CapEx will also be with us -- but we also have plans in other parts of both the U.S. and the rest of the world to do more stores. So there will be a relative increase on retail compared to the levels today that are quite low, actually. And then there will also be more investments into our backbone and our IT transformation, as Kristian talked about in creating this robust foundation and making sure our data and systems are integrated end-to-end from front end back inventories and everything. These investments are ongoing and will increase also in this financial year. And then finally, as part of our set up, there will also be a higher level of investments into production tools and machinery in our factories and with our partners as well to make sure we can deliver the best products and the best quality to our clients.

Just from modeling purchases of the R&D spend, how much of the increase will be on the product development?

I would say, it's probably DKK 40-60 million.

So DKK 40 million on R&D and the rest shared on the other?

Yes, DKK 40 million on intangible and DKK 60 million intangible, that's probably the way I would look at it because, yes.

Then that's more for Kristian then. Looking into to the coming year, you mentioned these action plans. Which ones are the most essential. And you also said that you are now going to the scaling will that mean that you think that the place is now -- the base is now in place and then you more scale going forward than the building blocks that you have already heard of? And then secondly, on the last year, which we leave -- are you -- are there any positives or negatives versus the ambition you have when the year started on where you have delivered internally on the plans and why you still have to do are behind the plans?

Thank you, Poul. When it come to the 3 pillars we talk about, it is marketing this product and it is retail. And they are all important. And when we get them right, we see that in the win city execution, we have good results from that with 38% now in this quarter and then 30% for the full year. And when we look at the even more detailed data, it confirms that is working. But we need to get all of them working, and we are working on a new marketing strategy that is containing like I said, much more global brand building which is cultural relevant, and that is also going to be executed locally. Like I also said, much more data driven. We have been drilling into our data and into our target audiences and the segmentation of those in much more detail. So we know them much better and we know how we become culture relevant for them. Also, like Nikolaj alluded to on the IT investments, the CRM systems and clienteling systems. We know that, that is working when we do that right. So I don't think you can single one or the other out. We need to do them collectively in a good way. But it's for sure that we have, I think, a good opportunity in the marketing and creating awareness. The stores, obviously, you have seen, we have rolled out Bond Street with a new cultural store. We have upgraded Harrods opened, I think, 2 weeks ago with already good results. We have done Milan as well. We have done Seoul as well. We had a pop-up in the Zurich Airport as well. And obviously, this retail culture store rollout will continue and is giving us the opportunity to express what the brand and what the company is all about by sharing the heritage story, by sharing the craftsmanship story, showing the acoustical capabilities that we have, they are the Lear capabilities that we have and create a completely different relation with our clients, where we get much closer to them. So all of this together is helping to drive the growth. And of course, the product portfolio as well is -- we invest a lot into that as well. And of course, we have news coming out on the portfolio side as well. So they're all important, Poul. With regard to your second question on last year, like we said, it is a transition year where we have strengthen our foundation and what we stand on. And of course, there are surprises like the tariffs and other things that -- we have always had that, I think, throughout our time here. And I think there will continue to be surprises, but I think it's up to us and the ability for us to mitigate them and deal with them as they come, which, of course, also includes tariffs. But I feel that the strategy that we put in place, the backbone, the foundation that we're building is stronger, I think, than ever before and should also make us more resilient for the future. What I'm extremely proud about is obviously the products that we're doing and the passion from the people that are working with us, not only within Bang & Olufsen, but also our partners and our clients as well. There is an enormous love for the brand in the world and among our partners, many of them are doing very well also when they are copy pasting what we are doing in the win cities. So we're full of excitement around that. And obviously, if you look at this year, now getting ready for the 100-year anniversary, it's amazing.

And on the market structure competition in the market, HARMAN as Samsung were out there, acquire Basel Workings and a lot of other brands in May, this consolidation of a lot of brands over on the HARMAN side. Is that impacting your way of thinking or how you have to position your -- so think about scale benefits here on the development and production? Or are you just following the strategy and then say it's more on your side to deliver then looking at what's happening around you?

So obviously, we're aware of what is happening, and we're following it and learning from it. We feel, however, that we have a good solid strategy with a lot of opportunity, and I think it's very difficult for any other brand to copy what we are doing because if you take the retail network, though they don't have a retail network. They don't have the same -- they can't create the same consistent experiences out in the world. They don't have the same portfolio breadth and width with that we have. So if we get our customers to fall in love with us, which is what we are, of course, aiming to do. We can serve them in many more places, I think, than the other brands that you are referring to. But of course, we keep an eye on that. And we may have to fine-tune some pieces of our strategy, but there's nothing at this point in time that we see that forces us to change our thinking.

And then the last one, just now, the price increases you had in the U.S. on June 1, has that resulted in stores being empty in the last month? Or have you seen any changes to traffic for the stores?

If we look at sell-out, that has continued to actually be positive. But obviously, when we look at individual products, there are different impacts on different products as such. And then what we see is, of course, also dealers are free to set the price. And of course, they can continue to sell, and they have had contracts in place and orders in place, but there is a hesitancy to replenish from our partners as well. You don't want to end up replenishing in the wrong time because if the tariff is gone tomorrow, and then you have replenished at this point in time, then obviously paid too much for it. So we are cautious in that, and then some of our partners, of course, are as well, but the U.S. strategy as such, we believe that if you look at long term, California is a great opportunity. Florida, Miami is a great opportunity for us and a few other places as well. So we will continue to execute on that. But should it get worse, we also have other places, other countries, other cities that we can turn to and accelerating.

I'll step back and see if there are other questions from others, and then I go into the queue again.

The next question is from Niels Leth again from DNB.

Yes. Perhaps you could talk a little bit about the current consumer sentiment in Europe and North America, given the geopolitical situation footfall like in your stores? And could you also talk about what's going to be the effect of store closings in the coming -- here in fiscal '26. Are there still multibrand stores where you need to exit from -- or is that largely done by now?

So on footfall, you generally speaking, I think everybody is seeing a decline in footfall and in the stores and some of our stores, of course, we have also a decline in footfall. But the way that we are working with our clients now and the experiences that we provide, we actually see that the basket sizes are going up and the conversion rate is going up with the marketing and the increased marketing and the global marketing efforts that we're going to put in place. The primary goal of that is, of course, to increase footfall and increase awareness because we know when we get them to the store that we actually convert successfully, and there is a high take rate of our offerings. So I think we're also in a better position being in the luxury space than being in the consumer electronic space comparing with that industry. We believe we are more resilient. With regard to the store closures, there will be some more stores for sure closing, but we are more excited about now on how we will accelerate the rollout of the new stores, right? So the retail plan for expansion upgrades and store relocations is what excites us, and there will be some more that will close. Maybe Nikolaj will give you a more precise number if you want to share that, but we have some in the target of that are not performing.

I can just add that there will be store closures in the coming year as well. It will not be as many as in the year we just ended. So it would probably be a little less in half of that number.

And now we have a follow-up from Poul Jessen from Danske Bank.

Yes. Thank you -- coming to the royalty part of the business, you're talking about continued ramp down of HP and ramp-up of TCL. How should we look at average or the combined number of those 2? Should we see it being stable versus last year when we look at '25, '26 aggregated?

Yes, aggregated. So when we look at the license business alone, so it's a pure license part of that segment, then it's our assumption that they will net out with each other, sort of the HP loss next year and the TCL gain will be sort of more or less 0 in '25, '26. And then hopefully, from '26, '27, we will start to see growth again.

When you say that Hyundai going to buy B&O in the future, is that having a material impact on the average prices per unit sold?

So the units sold, I think the impact will be slightly negative per unit, but I honestly cannot recall exactly. So maybe I can come back on that one.

So you will get less than you did on the home agreement?

Yes, the agreement. It is part of the HARMAN agreement.

I thought that they're moving to Audio by B&O should increase because you have more software components and so on?

Yes. But it's -- from a brand perspective, it is the lowest tier in our brand hierarchy. But let me come back on that one. I have to check up on the unit sales.

And then the final one for me is the U.S. dollar impact. It's clearly, on one hand, you are gaining from a softer U.S. dollar because you're sourcing in dollar. But as Chinese currency is more or less pegged to the dollar, should we expect that they will, in case that continues should they then neutralize each other?

I think it's a good question. It's hard to speculate in currency development. So of course, from a profit perspective, when the dollar decreasing in value, our cost of goods sold is, of course, coming in at a lower level. But our sort of net exposure is higher in U.S. dollar than it is on the Chinese renminbi.

Not if you look at your note in the report, then it's more or less the same impact by a change of 5% when you talk about earnings?

Yes. So the impact on earnings from the U.S. dollar is higher.

Yes, I missed the second part of it. So that's all for me. Thanks.

As there are no further questions at this moment, I will hand it back to the speakers for closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you, everybody, for joining today. Thank you for all your questions as well. If you have any additional questions or information you need, don't hesitate to come back to our IR department. And with that, I wish you all a good day and a great summer. Thank you very much for joining.