BHG Group AB (publ) (BHG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Gustaf Ohrn and CFO, Jesper Flemme. Please go ahead.

Hi, and welcome. My name is Gustaf Ohrn, CEO of BHG. I'm here together with Jesper Flemme, CFO, to present our Q4 and year-end report. We will also be available after the presentation to do our best to answer your questions. Next slide, please. This time, let me first take the opportunity to summarize the full year. Super proud of the year's achievement in 2025. We have delivered on what we set out to do. Entering the year, we defined 3 core tactical focuses and now summarizing the year, I can firmly say that we have delivered on all 3 of them. One, we have taken market share in a gradually strengthening market. The market has improved during the year, but I can, with confidence, say that with plus 9% organic growth, we have grown more than the market and taken market share. Two, we have managed to maintain our cost levels and with growth at the main lever, we have improved our profitability with more than 50% versus previous year. And three, we have continued to improve on the customer experience across our destinations. Next slide, please. Back to Q4, with a well-executed Bank Month as the main growth driver, we have, for the second consecutive quarter, delivered double-digit growth with a plus 10% growth in the quarter and continued growth in all 3 business units. We are confident that we have outgrown the market also in the fourth quarter. In the quarter, we've also reported a significantly improved profitability, reporting SEK 158 million in earnings, which corresponds to a 48% improvement versus previous year. The improvement in earnings comes primarily from top line growth in combination with the strengthened product margin as well as direct selling costs and SG&A well in control. Of course, we are very happy about the growth in the quarter, but I would also like to highlight the improvement in product margin where the team has done a great job. In an unchanged price challenging market, our focus on price matching and unique assortment has enabled an improvement in gross margin. We report a strong positive cash flow of SEK 371 million in the quarter, an improvement versus previous year and following the normal seasonal pattern. Summarizing the year, we are super proud that we have been able to reduce our inventory at the same time as we have driven 9% organic growth. Next slide, please. Strong growth in the third quarter. Let me come back to market and the market outlook in a minute. But first, let me try to clarify where the growth comes from. From a geo perspective, the main growth comes from Sweden, being our largest market and continue to lead the way in market recovery with a 10% growth in the quarter. Disposable income is on the rise and a fairly stable housing transaction market gives positive momentum. We also, unchanged, see a strong sales development in the important markets of Norway being super strong with a 16% growth and Germany with a 6% growth. Germany, still a challenging market, but where we see positive signs and growth primarily driven by successful geographic expansion in many of our entities. The most challenging of our key markets is unchanged Finland, which trails our other markets in recovery. Considering this, we are proud to report growth and are confident that we have taken market share also in the Finnish market. From a category perspective, the main growth comes from continued strong sales development in the Bathroom category as well as in the Furniture segment, driven primarily -- partly by our revamped entry-level assortment in HFM in combination with the well-executed campaigns in Value Home during the Black Month period. We also, and more surprisingly, saw strong growth in the Garden category. In the Garden category, quarter experienced strong sales development and big volumes of big ticket items as automowers. Considering this was late in the fall, it is very surprising to see a strong development in this category. This driven by a tech shift in automowers from sling-based to satellite-based navigation and thereby enabling new brands, primarily from China to enter the market. The new market entrants' main sales driver being significantly lower entry-level price points. And with the new lower price points, the addressable market for this type of products expands considerably. Next slide, please. Coming back to the market and our outlook. Our view is that the market continued to strengthen during the fourth quarter, and it has strengthened gradually during the whole year with some minor differences between the quarters. Looking forward, we have a positive outlook for the market also for the coming year. The key drivers of demand in our categories is disposable income and housing transactions. If we start with Sweden, which is our largest market, given what we know, we expect to see substantial improvements in disposable income for our key target group in 2026, primarily driven by tax income reductions, including the [indiscernible] and other tax benefits in combination with the VAT reduction on food. The result is a substantial increase in disposable income that we are confident will have a positive effect on demand in our categories. The other key driver of demand in our category is the number of transactions in the housing market. This has developed positively in the last 2 years, and we assess that it will be further fueled in 2026 by the easing of the amortization rules in April of this year. BHG also benefits from the structural migration from off-line retail to the online channel and in our categories as well as compared to other more online mature markets, penetration is still low, and we foresee several years of the online channel growing faster than physical retail. Also, with the introduction of AI-enabled search, the advantages of buying online versus physical retail is even further improved, which we believe will continue to increase the online penetration even further. In short, we have a continued positive outlook for demand in 2026. Next slide, please. Looking forward, we are since 1 year now out of the restructuring phase, and we are firmly executing our strategy for profitable growth. Our growth drivers is driven by 2 layers of external growth factors. As mentioned, the total market is back in growth mode. Online penetration still low in our categories and set to continue to increase. On top of these 2 external growth drivers, we have 3 layers of internal growth drivers: Operational excellence, strategic initiatives and M&A, which I will expand on in a minute. Next slide, please. The first and most fundamental growth layer, operational excellence, the daily grind of being a retailer, the constant work of assortment, product and pricing, a tireless job being executed every day by management in our group companies. As a retailer, never to forget, you are never better than your offering to your chosen target group. Regardless of all else, without the right product and the right price, you will never win. Customer acquisition and making sure that the customer you acquire is a positive experience all through the customer journey and thereby securing customer retention. Efficient, data-driven customer acquisition has, over the last years, been primarily about optimizing for the Google algorithm, but is now increasingly also about optimizing your business for the AI-driven language models as ChatGPT. This is something we are currently focusing a lot of our thoughts and efforts on, and we can already now see the benefits of these efforts. In this layer of growth, we also add the important growth levers of category growth and product expansion as well as geo expansion into new markets and customer segment expansion. How can we extend our target group. In all our businesses, we are driving at least 1 of these growth drivers and in many, 2 or 3 in combination. Next slide, please. The second growth layer we call strategic initiatives. This is strategic development areas that we have identified where we, from group, try to support our businesses to secure competitiveness. These areas vary over time and during their reconstruction phase, there was, as you know, much about consolidation and inventory reduction. Now in the current phase, our main focus lies in the key priorities of unique assortment, cost structure as a strategic advantage, AI and data and additional revenue streams with a current focus on Retail Media. Let me take a minute to expand on these 4 strategic initiatives to secure competitiveness and growth in our platforms. Unique assortment, historically often referred to as private label. Uniqueness in offering is the only way to secure not selling the exact same product as your competitors, only competing with price. Uniqueness is a key driver on pricing power as it is the only way to avoid direct price competition and secure gross margin improvements. In the changing AI landscape and with the introduction of AI agent-based buying, uniqueness in assortment also increasingly becomes strategically important to long-term secure a strong and relevant position. Cost structure as a strategic advantage has historically been a part of how BHG sustains market leadership and has helped us to stay profitable also in challenging times. But not only seeing cost structure as a way to increase profit, but also as a way to secure strategic advantage. A superior cost structure is what enables the best offer to the consumer. And over time, this will be the strongest competitive advantage you can have. Long term, those who can afford to give the best offer to the consumer and still make a profit will be the winners. AI and data. Between our platforms, we have vast amounts of data. And with the use of AI, we are working on how to leverage this to drive growth, efficiency and customer experience. We have already implemented several AI initiatives and have even more in the pipeline. We today use AI-powered tools for tasks such as product upload, customer service, marketing and CRM. And there's a large number of tools already available through external services that we utilize. But maybe even more exciting is the work that we are doing to develop tailor-made AI agents at surprisingly low cost levels to enhance customer experience and growth as well as driving efficiencies. And last, additional revenue streams, basically using the traffic we have to our site to create new revenue streams. Our current focus lies within retail media, using the traffic to our sites to sell media, primarily to our existing suppliers, but also externally. This is something we are already doing primarily in the Bygghemma platform, but where we are now taking the next step to professionalize and expand this to more of our platforms. Next slide, please. The last growth layer is M&A. M&A is and has always been a key part of driving growth and profitability for BHG. We have been less active with this through the consolidation phase, but now with a stronger financial position, it is back up in focus. Our current M&A strategy is built on the foundation of bolt-on acquisitions to fuel growth, largely through assortment expansion in our existing platforms with limited risk. This rather than larger platform acquisitions. A more proactive approach where we have done the job to define what we are looking to acquire in what platforms acquisitions are valid and what M&A targets we are looking for. Staying strategically and financially disciplined with a number of preset criterias in terms of business models and profitability levels to be in place if an acquisition is to be considered. Thanks. And with this, I will leave it to Jesper to deep dive on the numbers.

Thank you, Gustaf, and Slide 10, please. With Q4 and therefore, the full year behind us, we can conclude that 2025 represented a significant step in the right direction towards delivering profitability in line with our financial targets. We have now improved profitability for 9 consecutive quarters and delivered growth for the past 5 quarters. For the full year, organic growth amounted to 9.4% and adjusted EBIT margin came in at 3.7%, an improvement of more than 1 percentage point. This underlines what Gustaf has already said, we have clearly entered a phase of profitable growth. Turning now to Page 11 and sales development. We are pleased to deliver double-digit organic growth again this quarter, building on last quarter's momentum. Net sales increased by 5%, reaching SEK 3.0 billion and organic growth was 10.7%. From a market perspective, we continue to perform very well in our largest market, Sweden, where we grew 10%. Among other major markets, Norway delivered the strongest performance during the quarter. Across the segments, Value Home stands out with organic growth of 16%, driven by a very strong value proposition in sofas and beds. Turning now to Page 12 and profitability. As already said, profitability has improved year-on-year for 9 consecutive quarters. This quarter, earnings improved by SEK 51 million or 48% year-over-year, driven by strong growth, improved gross margin and effective cost control. Adjusted EBIT amounted to SEK 158 million in the second quarter, corresponding to an EBIT margin of 5.2%. Most notably, all 3 segments improved both earnings and margin compared to last year. Moving on to Slide 13 and the EBIT bridge. Our EBIT margin improved by 1.5 percentage points in the quarter. As has been the story throughout the year, also in this quarter, the improvement in profitability is driven by strong growth, combined with solid cost control, providing scale on fixed costs as well as by efficiency gains in direct selling costs. In addition, we saw a positive contribution from product margin this quarter. After margin headwinds in the first 3 quarters, several initiatives started to pay off, including improved planning for the Black Month campaign period and more efficient price matching. That said, gross margin management is continuous work. Price pressure will not disappear, and we remain focused on striking the right balance between growth and profitability. All in all, our EBIT margin amounted to 5.2% in the quarter. Slide 14 and cash flow, please. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to SEK 371 million, driven by EBITDA and a positive working capital development, in turn driven by reduced inventory levels in line with our seasonal profile. The right-hand graph showing the development in liquidity walks us through the starting period position of SEK 473 million, adding the cash flow from operations and the impact of investing activities and finally, deducting the financing activities, which are primarily related to amortization of both the revolving credit facility and leasing liabilities, but also include interest payments, bringing us to the period end SEK 301 million of liquidity at hand. Slide 15, please. The group's net debt amounted to SEK 1.0 billion at the end of the quarter and net debt in relation to LTM adjusted EBITDA ended at 2.4x, meaning that I, for the first time in many years, can add in line with our financial targets. A quick reminder on seasonality. Our working capital position is typically strongest at the end of Q4 and then reverses in Q1, which means leverage and cash flow will temporarily move in the opposite direction. On top of our liquidity at hand, we had unutilized credit facilities at the end of the quarter of SEK 1 billion. Acquisition-related liabilities amounted to SEK 236 million at the end of the quarter, of which we assesses SEK 85 million to be paid in '26 and another SEK 26 million to be paid in 2027. With that, I will hand it back over to Gustaf to summarize and conclude.

Thank you very much, Jesper. Next slide, please. Now let me do my best to try and summarize this. We are proud of what we have achieved in 2025. We have delivered on what we set out to do, driving 9% organic growth, maintaining our cost levels and thereby summarizing a plus 50% profitability improvement over the full year. In the quarter, we have delivered double-digit growth with growth and profitability improvements in all 3 business units and a total of 48% profitability improvement. The market has improved in 2025, and we have a bright outlook also for the coming year, driven primarily by increased disposable income. The structural shift from offline to the online channel, we assess will continue and now further fueled by AI-based search, giving even further advantages for online-based buying. We have a clear and defined strategy in place that we are firmly executing on with focus on operational excellence, a number of defined strategic initiatives and further fueled by M&A to continue driving profitable growth. I am more confident than ever that we are on the right path to achieving our targeted profit levels of first 5% and then on to the 7% EBIT margin we have in our financial goals. I would like to end this presentation by inviting you all to Digital Capital Markets Day on the 19th of March. There, we will have plenty of time to expand on the group strategy and the long-term development. Looking forward to see you all. Thank you very much for listening. And now with the support of Jesper and Jakob, we will do our very best to answer your questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Niklas Ekman from DNB Carnegie.

Can I start asking you when you talk about a positive outlook for 2026. First of all, I assume that this is also a reflection of your current trading here in January. Otherwise, you wouldn't say that. And can you elaborate a little bit on the strength of a potential sales in '26? Because now you've had strong growth for a couple of quarters on very easy comparisons, but you now start to face much tougher comparisons in the year ahead. So do you think that there is still a potential for you to continue to grow around 10%? Or are you expecting a slowdown simply based on the tough comparisons? That's my first question.

Thank you, Niklas. Gustaf here. First, I should say that I will not comment on current trading, and you know that. And as you also know, we don't do any forward-looking statements. But I think it's relevant to sort of conclude that we now have 5 quarters of growth. And we should also highlight that in the Q4 now was the first quarter where we actually were meeting growth as well. So as you say, the comps are getting tougher, but they were quite tough now also in the last quarter of 2025, and we still delivered the 10%. So looking forward, yes, with what we see in disposable income improvements and housing transactions, which we believe will happen with the easing of the amortization, we still have a positive outlook. But as I said before, we don't give any guidance on levels of that, and it's also very hard to do. But we have an unchanged, a very positive outlook looking forward into '26, and we believe in continued growth, both in the market and our ability to continue to overdeliver in terms of taking market share.

Very good. Can I continue on margins? You mentioned here your 5% margin target from your last Capital Markets Day. I mean I'm just curious now, you've seen a margin improvement of more than 1 percentage point in '25. If that continues in '26, you should be able to reach it by the end of '26. Do you think that's likely? And is that -- would you say that, that is your ambition? Or do you think that it will take a little bit longer?

As you know, we don't give any forward-looking guidance. But I think we come back to the fact that we have now delivered profitability improvements for 9 consecutive quarters. So we are definitely on the right path to achieving the 5% and then on to the 7%. We have not defined exactly when.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Third question here on resumed M&A. As you mentioned here, you're now finally down to your target of net debt below 2.5x EBITDA. But that's in a seasonally strong quarter, I guess, from a cash flow perspective. If you resume M&A, are you willing to go temporarily above 2.5x again? Or are you assuming now a more prudent approach to M&A going forward?

I think we should start by saying that we are super happy that we are [indiscernible] capital structure goal. So happy with that. We should also say that we remain when it comes to M&A. I think we have defined a very clear strategy where we're talking about bolt-ons rather than platform acquisitions. And where we also have defined what we -- how to stay financially disciplined to make sure that we remain prudent within these levels.

And as you said, Niklas, you know that leverage will likely be higher at the end of Q1 due to seasonality.

But I think we should say that we are on a path to lower our net debt level, and we aim to continue that path. Then there could be exceptions for smaller acquisitions within that path. But the path to continue to lower it is unchanged.

Very clear. And just a final question. I note that your noncontrolling interests have been quite significant, both in Q4 and in previous quarters. It was SEK 15 million in this quarter, SEK 52 million for the full year, and that's around 1/4 of your earnings that goes to noncontrolling interest. Why is this number so high given that you have full ownership of the vast majority of assets?

Simply because of the only company being reported as a noncontrolling interest being Furniture1 have had a fantastic 2025. And it is a fantastic business that has developed from some SEK 100 million in turnover in 2018 to above SEK 1 billion last year. So it's a fantastic business. They had a fantastic '25, but their share of the group will likely come down as the rest of the group is improving faster.

The next question comes from Benjamin Wahlstedt from ABGSC..

A couple of questions from me as well. So first of all, Value Home reported the best product margin in quite some time. And I was wondering if you could give any additional flavor about this. Are we seeing a positive FX impact already? Or is this purely a higher private label share?

Gustaf here. Benjamin, I would say it's a combination of the 2. There is an FX effect from the lower U.S. dollar that has a positive effect in Value Home. But we've also, as you know, worked very hard on our unique assortments, and it's one of our key strategic initiatives going forward. And I think that work in Value Home, where we have the biggest share of unique assortment is also paying off in this quarter.

And as Gustaf said, it's roughly 0.5 percentage point in Value Home, but it's a negligible effect on the group.

So 0.5 percentage point from FX?

Yes.

Yes. Perfect. And then I was wondering if you could say anything more generally about what you've seen in terms of the competitive pressure or campaign pressure perhaps. Premium Living also reported a strong gross margin, and that's typically the most campaign-sensitive segment, right?

Price pressure is always tough. We're living in a very price competitive world. We have price transparency, if anything, increasing. So I think the result is that -- our increased product margin is a result of a really good job working price matching and working with our unique assortment. But I would not say that the price pressure has eased in any way. As we have said in the past, there was a period where there was lot of excess inventory in the market and then price pressure was higher. But I think since the normalization of price pressure -- of inventory, we have roughly had the same and high price pressure.

Perfect. And then maybe finally, I understand that it's still sort of early days, but I would like to ask for your views on AI shopping or ask you to drill down a bit into that. You've been fairly explicit in that you've previously strived to own Google Search. And now you know it's like Google Search is gradually being replaced by GPT search or AI search. And my question is, how will you win GPT search? Is it possible to win GPT search in the way you've won Google Search previously?

Yes, we believe so. And as I mentioned, we're spending quite a lot of time and resources right now on something we call AI visibility, which is basically optimizing traffic acquisition for the AI-based language model searches, both ChatGPT and others. We are doing that, and we have a number of criteria that needs to be fulfilled in order to improve on that. But we should also say that the main criteria for Google Search, which is basically having data, having well-structured data and having that well-structured data available is also valid for AI-based searching. But we have a program, which we're running through all our businesses right now of how we can improve on AI visibility. We're seeing good progress on that. And there was a small test recently where we came out on top. I think the only ones we had ahead of us were actually the pharmacies. But after that Bygghemma was the first mentioned business when it comes to AI visibility. So we're doing a lot of job on there, and there's definitely things to be done, and we have a good confidence that we could be strong also in this field just as we have been and are on Google.