Duell Oyj (DUELL.HE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Duell's First Quarter and Full Year '25 Financial Report Webcast. We have the CEO, Magnus Miemois; and CFO, Caj Malmsten, presenting the highlights. During the webcast, there's an opportunity to send questions via the chat. And at the end of the webcast, we will come back to the Q&A session. My name is Pellervo Hämäläinen from the Investor Relations. Stage is yours.

Thank you, Pellervo. Good morning on my behalf as well, and welcome to the webcast for our full year results. This summer -- the summer weather arrived late in the Nordics this year. But when it finally arrived, it, of course, triggered consumer activities in the summer season. When we look at the fiscal year in total, then we conclude that we managed to keep up net sales, although the market was, to be fair, challenging. And the demand shifted during the year if you compare the first half of the fiscal year and the second. As the Central Europe market area is the strategic focus growth area for Duell, we are happy to see also that on a full year level, the Central European business continued to grow. But in the Central European equation, we also have elements and markets where we struggle, particularly in France. So the French demand, the French market with quite a lot of uncertainties, politically in society affects consumer sentiment. But we also have a situation where we are transitioning between brands in our portfolio and this transition phase, where brands are exiting and others are replacing is causing a dip in performance in the French business. And as a whole, the situation, both in terms of how the demand slowed down throughout the year quarter-to-quarter and these kind of changes then on the profitability side, this had a negative effect. Again, looking at various categories, and markets, as mentioned, the Central Europe market continues to develop very favorably. We have some really strong elements there in our operation. I'll highlight one of them later. And then looking at various product categories, we have some product categories that are really stable throughout the year. For example, the all-terrain vehicle related category that is really not seasonal. It's more of a throughout the year. And then if you say compare, for example, the bicycle segment, which is clearly focused towards the summer period. And here, we have had a very good traction in the market. And now with political and taxation-related changes on the horizon, this a little bit slowed down particularly in the Nordics. Then looking at inventory levels, we carried a handicap, so to say, throughout the later part of the year, which was caused by the lower demand in the winter season. And of course, here in the -- throughout the summer, these categories and these products were totally in off-season period. So as such, we carried that handicap throughout the fiscal year. A few highlights on -- operational highlights from the quarter. As I mentioned a minute ago, we have some very strong operations in Central Europe. And the highlight here is about our company, Tran-Am in the U.K., which have had a very good year, the second best year in the company's history, the best year in the era of part of Duell Group. And although the market also in U.K. is shaped by a declining amount of new motorcycle registrations, then Tran-Am is able to keep going and keep getting a stronger grip of the market. And it's just evidence of the things we do in U.K. are the right things and they're valued by the customers. It's also important to note that there are synergies, of course, between these different countries and particularly on the brand portfolio. So we can see that certain products that are trading well and faring well in the Nordics also suit the climate of our industry in the U.K. Then moving to the second highlight. If we take a snapshot on some of our brands. Schuberth, German helmet manufacturer is top-notch respected premium brand in the motorcycle segment, known for very highest levels of safety, highest level of comfort and low noise levels. And we have a long relationship with Schuberth in several countries throughout Europe. And this year, for this season, they launched also product innovations. And these new products fared really well in the market, and we saw that then as favorably developing sales volumes. So a highlight of a great partnership -- great products, great partnership and good results in that. The third highlight from the ATV category. So we have a broad range of parts for ATV vehicles, meaning spare parts and accessories, but we also have a broad range of, we call them ATV implements. So these are the tools that you attach to an ATV, either behind the vehicle or in front of the vehicle, depending on the purpose. What you see in the picture is a wood splitter that you can move with ATV and bring to your work site and make firewood. And this broad assortment of ATV parts with over 5,000 different SKUs for the ATV category. And as I mentioned earlier, really throughout -- really stable segment throughout the year is a very important category in our equation. And also maybe the other viewpoint on this is that particularly these ATV implements in our range of products, they are in the upper end of -- in the value, so unit price, which means, of course, that for each transaction, it works quite favorably on the revenues. Then the final highlight, Halvarssons, our house brand -- one of our house brands for motorcycle rider gear. And so while most part of the normal assortment is for the consumers, we sometimes do special orders for professional customers. So in this case, in one of the Central European countries, a special order with special colors and features for one Central European countries, police, motorcycle police force. So here, the viewpoint that we have, we have a strong brand, high-quality products that are trusted by the professional riders that use these in work during their full working day on the motorcycle and appreciate then the high quality of these products. And in the picture, you will see yet again a Schuberth helmet, which is very common in the professional rider squad. So these are a few highlights to give you also a little bit a few snapshots about what's inside the Duell business with the various product categories and the various regions. If we then move to the quarter and the fiscal year in terms of key figures. So in the fourth quarter, as I touched a little bit on here earlier, throughout the year, the growth rate slowed down throughout quarter-to-quarter. And in the last quarter, numerically, a few hundred thousands below in net sales. On the full year, though the net sales grew by 1.6% and reached EUR 126.6 million. The fourth quarter is typically shaped also by -- it goes towards the end of the summer season. The large categories go towards the finish line, and this means that the dynamics of stock clearance and final campaigns for the seasons are taking place, so also this year. But I'm happy to see that we even with these normal seasonal dynamics, we managed to maintain gross margins on a quite reasonable level in the quarter. Overall, on gross margins throughout the year, as we had also reported earlier, overall, there's a pressure on gross margins. And this, of course, is related to the dynamics of demand, the dynamics of competition, and this clearly can be seen on gross margins as well. The profitability in the fourth quarter was a little bit burdened by customer defaults, and we managed to reach an EBITA -- adjusted EBITA of EUR 1.0 million in the quarter. And as we already communicated in connection with the third quarter, third quarter being our largest, most active part of the season, part of the fiscal year, it was clear then already at that point that we would not be able to manage the same level of profitability in absolute terms as previous year, and we now reached EUR 4.9 million in adjusted EBITA. On the financial position, the net debt remained, by and large, on the same level and also, of course, they're affected by net working capital changes. We'll open up this a little bit more here in a minute. Leverage was at the level of 3.3 net debt to adjusted EBITA and the cash -- the operation generates a positive cash flow to the magnitude of EUR 1.5 million in the fiscal year. So here, the highlights, the key figures, and then I'll hand over to Caj for a little bit more in-depth view.

Thank you, Magnus. Let's open up the numbers for Q4 and full year a little bit more in detail. So starting with the sales area, we had a good start of the year and that first quarter, still nice growth, but then the demand slowed down, and that continued also in the fourth quarter. So the growth in the fourth quarter was negative, minus 2.3%, total number of EUR 30.9 million. But the good thing here is we can see that our strategy of expanding and growing in Europe is continuing. If we look on the full year, we start to be close to 50-50, so slowly growing. Also, if we look at full year, slight growth, 1.6 percentage and in comparable currencies, a little bit lower, 0.8%. And here, it's to be noted, although I said the Central Europe business is growing, it's impacted by -- or the impact from a weak French business is around EUR 4 million on the full year. And also what we have here, which is following, I would say, the general trend in the market that the online sales is growing on a yearly level. Now we are up to 30% compared to 26%. And also, we are back on growth level with our own brands, 20% compared to 18%. So all in all, I would say, which follow all the numbers here, it's a little bit mix of positive and negative things, which is as usual. But market has been challenging, showing in a low growth in total. This is impacting, I would say, even more on the profitability side. We start from the quarter 4. We have EUR 1 million in the quarter 4 and clearly lower than the year before. Also a pretty high OpEx percentage, 19.8%. I come back to that a little bit. When we look at the full year, we have a decline in the profitability from EUR 6.2 million to EUR 4.9 million, which corresponds to 3.9% EBITA margin. And here, the corresponding effect from the French business is EUR 2.3 million. So on the EBITA side, even a bigger impact to the full year. And an additional component, which has come during the year, a little bit more heavy in the fourth quarter is that we can see that the challenges in the market is affecting others also. So we have a number of bankruptcies among our customers, which is resulting in bad debts throughout the year. Going forward to the net working capital. Here, we have -- we can also see that the inventory, especially is affected here that we end up a little bit higher than last year, EUR 46.4 million. And as Magnus said, we are carrying with us the inventory from the weaker snow season. And then also, we had the mild spring, which meant the motorcycle business took off a little bit later. This then resulting into a net working capital of EUR 50 million. But on the other hand, also, we have a lot of development going on in improving working capital. But unfortunately, we cannot see it this year yet. And as an example, which is listed here, we have consolidated and decreased our SKUs to take out overlaps and so forth with around 20%, but that's right now eaten up by the weaker demand. Going to the financial situation here as we start from a leverage point of view, 3.3 compared to 2.5. So that indicates that we have some challenges in the -- especially balance sheet side. But looking at what happened here, we continue to pay off the debt as planned. So EUR 3.3 million was amortized during the year. And operational cash flow despite the higher net working capital is slightly positive, EUR 1.57 million. And here also, we can see the effect of that -- then is that we have a little bit less cash and cash equivalents in the end of the year, EUR 5.6 million. As a result of this development, we have, together with the lenders, renegotiated or rebalanced the financing terms and come to an agreement, thanks to good collaboration with them that we have now terms that, I would say, suits our business better in the market situation, we are now and also taking into consideration the cyclical business or seasonal business that we have. This amendment was signed in first part of October here. So as a total, I would say, sales slightly up, disappointing profitability, some challenges with the NVC. But as a total, I would say we still have a good platform going forward. So I hand over to you back, Magnus. Thank you.

Thank you, Caj. So going forward was the phrase I continue from, and that is then looking towards this year, the ongoing year, 2026 financial year, and our guidance for it. So when we -- the outlook we have on the market is that we believe that the consumer sentiment is still quite fragile, and there are many uncertainties in the market as a whole that, of course, affects consumer sentiment and then in turn, affects the demand picture in our business. So we expect that as a market environmental in total, it will remain suppressed also in the next 12 months. And in terms of guidance for the business and the performance in 2026, we guide that we expect that the organic net sales to remain on the same level as last year and also the profitability expressed in adjusted EBITA to stay on the same level as last year. If we then recap the Duell strategy and where are we on this? So Duell has its roots, its stronghold in the Nordics market and continue to have. And Central Europe is the market area where we seek active growth, where we are delivering active growth. And also now in 2025 fiscal year, we managed to deliver growth from the Central European market as a total. And you can maybe also look at this that gradually, we are creating a Duell that is more balanced in its exposure to different economies, different consumer size, different consumer demography and it's building a resilience for better handling variations in either seasonal demand or demographic demand in the -- geographical demand in the Central European space. We are actively choosing which customer that we are focusing on, and this work in the Central European marketplace has been paying off in terms of creating the -- delivering the growth. Another pillar in Duell strategy is that we want to be the partner for utilizing online channels to drive sales growth. And as we could see from the key metrics that we track there, this has -- is now growing quite a lot, so the share of the online sales increased from 26% to 30%. And this is, of course, a combination of customers that are fully focused on e-commerce and customers that are gradually leveraging these technologies and these sales channels in their own business being, let's say, multichannel type of companies. And -- but this is a clear trend in consumer behavior. So it also makes sense to have this or it's expected that you will see these kind of results. Also on the product portfolio development, this is an ongoing work. We have a quite broad offering. This is a clear cornerstone of our strategy to have a broad offering in these categories. But with the amount of brands and products, it's an ongoing work to also constantly analyze and optimize. And one way to do this is to really critically look at that where do we have overlapping either between brands or between individual products and streamline the offering because this, of course, makes it also -- it helps the equation of managing inventories and inventory turnarounds. So during the fiscal year, as Caj already mentioned, we reduced the number of SKUs by over 20%. Looking at the value chain, we are a unique player that has a uniquely broad offering. Many of our competitors have products in categories 2 or 3 of these. So maybe the large ones, motorcycle, ATV, we can clearly find a number of competitors. Maybe for geographical reasons, the competition landscape on snowmobile is less. But we are, in a way, a unique partner, a resourceful partner that can offer a broad range of product categories, and this is something we believe is part of the winning formula for Duell. We have a broad dealer network with more than 8,500 dealers in roughly split 50-50 between Central Europe and Nordics. And as mentioned, some of them are purely in e-commerce, some of them play all the strings and some of them are more traditionally focused on brick-and-mortar type of activities, particularly if they are, for example, repair shops, then it's really a brick-and-mortar type of operation. And currently, this is now the split, you could say, about 70-30. In the end, there is a consumer that starts the cycle of making a purchase decision. And this, of course, means that we continuously work on having an attractive brand portfolio and attractive product offering that brings the consumer to our dealer and then, of course, equally the business to us. And we believe that with this offering, with this approach, we can continue to be the preferred wholesale partner, both for brands and for dealers in the market that we address. We need to continue develop Duell. We are continuing to developing Duell in -- making it stronger day by day. And this goes through many set of different activities. One of the activities is to constantly develop the operational footprint. Our geography is changing, our customer, let's say, how the -- where the revenue is taking place is gradually changing. So this also means that we have to make sure that we both follow in terms of operational footprint and can enable the growth in the best place. We recently announced that we are now started a process to streamline the Nordics warehouse operation. So we currently operate 3 warehouses in the Nordics, and we will move -- we will consolidate this to remain with 2 warehouses in the Nordics, one in Sweden and one in Finland, and this work is ongoing. And this is aimed at both delivering operational benefits, but also a better customer service level to customers in both regions. A quite big basket of various ongoing development work is the technology stack. So in our business, we have, of course, as any company, a given technology stack in how our business workflows utilize. And here, we have decided to start with the customer touch point layer of this technology stack. And we now, in the fourth quarter, launched the first phase of a new e-commerce, a B2B e-commerce platform, so the channel, which our dealers order through and the first release was related to the Nordics bicycle segment and the subsequent releases are now in development phase and will be launched then in a certain sequence. So this work is ongoing and now we already have the first results in use. And this work aims at providing easier tools for our customers, but also to deliver synergies between the various categories and various, let's say, assortment catalogs in Duell. Then finally, but actually most important on a short term is that we have now just these days concluded the plans for a performance uplift project. The market situation and certain challenges, as highlighted, created a profitability challenge for us now, and we stagnated on net working capital efficiency development. So these 2 elements is the target of our performance uplift project, so within the project, we have identified now a number of levers that addresses either profitability or capital efficiency. Think about that mainly as inventory efficiency gains. And this project will now move into execution in these days, and this is one of the most important focus areas for us now to as quickly as possible, turn the performance trend and get back on track with all the major KPIs. So if we summarize the fiscal year from September to August, September '24 to August '25, we managed to deliver growth in a market that gradually start where the demand in the market started to slow down, and we faced some significant challenges in some of our markets. But still, we managed to deliver slight growth. And the fact that the Central European market area is delivering the growth, this is extremely important for us, tracking the strategic focus. We made good progress with the large key customers and in the e-commerce sector. And again, this is important strategically to correlate how the consumer buying behaviors are developing and that we are playing in the right arenas, so to say. So great to see good progress in that. And as I mentioned here now, really center stage of our focus now is the performance uplift project that we will -- that cuts across the entire group. And with the identified improvement areas, we believe we can improve the performance clearly in the periods going forward. So this summarizes our fiscal year, and we move to perhaps questions.

Thank you, Magnus and Caj. So we have several questions from the audience. And one question is related to France. So we -- as we reported, so we had some challenges in France and also impacting the sales and the profitability. So what is behind these challenges? And so -- and what are we going to do to fix the current status?

The challenges we have in France is a combination of a couple of major -- 2 main things. One is, of course, the market demand, the sentiment in the market with many -- well, how many Prime Ministers have France had in the last period. So there's a lot of uncertainty in the -- overall in the economy there, and this affects consumers and spending. So this is one thing. But the key -- more important factor is that we've had an unexpected sudden change in the brand portfolio there. So as you know, we have a broad portfolio of brands and some of them overlap. And in this case, we had started to expand with a brand that we have pan-European. And then we had a brand in -- that we only had in France and there's sort of a reaction to these changes that then in a period then caused a very big difference in sales volume from losing revenue on one side and not managing to replace with the other brand in the same period, as simple as that.

Yes. So related to this one, so in the report in this section of risks, so we took up that one of the main risk or key risks are these changes in distribution models from brand owners. So is there a trend moving towards that? Or if there is so, what are the actions that we are doing?

It's maybe -- I think it's important to not generalize what one company's decision and what they believe is right in the market and, let's say, project that as a formula for a brand portfolio of over 500 brands. So maybe that's the first thing. But you could also say on the flip side that with this amount of brands, there's always some movement and some changes. And part of those changes is proactive from our side that we develop and we say, well, we want to drop this brand and we want to bring in this brand. Actually, the starting point of this sequence now related to France was that. And so these are individual cases on each company, each brand and not something I would generalize.

Okay. Then we have one question related to the, let's say, the service level for customers and delivery speed. So have we been able to maintain the kind of the good service level and kind of the speed of deliveries that the customers are expecting?

Broadly, yes. We actually focused for this season, particularly on spare parts, meaning urgent need in the motorcycle sector for -- with increased inventory for, let's call them, the high runners. So of course, statistically, we can see which products are really actively moving in any given period. And so we decided to boost inventory levels on these kind of products, and it gave good results. So that's a clear example of increased availability means better service level means. Then if we talk about speed, it starts with product availability. But equally important is, of course, the speed of delivery, the logistics, the outbound logistic network and operation. And there, we are generally good; however, we still have work to do on developing our logistical footprint, so we are closer to customers in the growing markets. So in the traditional markets, I would say, bueno. In the growing markets, there, we still have work to do to enable growth.

Okay. So Duell announced earlier about the plan to consolidate the warehouse services or warehouses in Finland and Sweden from Tampere to Tranås and to Mustasaari. Is this related only to the cost savings or also enhancing the service level?

Both. We -- of course, in a quite small Nordic market, operating 3 warehouses is not an ideal equation from an operating cost point of view. So there's clearly a gain in operational efficiency that we're seeking there, but also the customer service level, and I would say particularly now to Swedish bicycle customers. This step will enable Duell to better serve our bicycle customers in Sweden. And obviously, we are targeting to use that improvement to drive growth.

Yes. One question was probably expected related to waiver and the new terms of this financial agreement. So in which way this fits better to Duell's business?

We have to go back a little bit in history there that the current or the old agreement was made a few years back and a lot of things has happened since that. So that was more adapted to that situation. Now we have, what I would say, more fluctuations in the markets and even from time to time, bigger swings between the quarters, and that was not really reflected as well in the old one. And that together with the bank, we have now, so to say, agreed and both were of the same opinion that it's time for an amendment.

Okay. Related to that one, so are the, let's say, higher financial costs related to this waiver? Or is there something else behind?

To the waiver, what's behind there? We didn't meet the leverage cost in quarter 4 or the leverage covenant in quarter 4, and that's the reason for the need for the waiver.

Okay. Good. There's a question related to your -- Magnus, your comment in the financial report related to the guidance since the guidance is expecting to be at the same level, both when it comes to the net sales and the profitability. But you mentioned there that you expect that or believe that we are improving our operations. So what is the gap between these ones?

Of course, the guidance primarily takes the stance from the market. And then we derive the view on the market, and we derive the consequent guidance then from that. Then as I said, we are extremely focused on profitability improvement and capital efficiency improvement. So of course, once we move forward, if we see the performance trend clearly deviating, then we will, of course, address that separately. But at this point, this is now how we see the guidance.

Okay. Then coming to the sales or, let's say, coming season, how the presales has gone forward so far.

Great.

Thinking about the winter season.

Yes. Okay. Winter season, the presales activities were earlier on in the year before the summer. And now we move into the period where we are delivering the preordered goods to dealers for the winter season. And if we -- now we have to go back to the previous winter say that what was the sentiment going into preorders for the coming winter. Of course, it was a little bit suppressed also from the fact that the dealers had some stock. But you could say -- so yes, the preorder sentiment was a little bit down, but not dramatically. And as our experience is now, it's all a function of when does the season start and what are the conditions. At least we are very confident on our competitive advantage in this winter season. There's no doubt. We know we have a very good, let's say, competitive advantage for that season. It's more a question about what's the demand.

Okay. What about then the dealers after this summer season? Do you have a grip how their kind of inventory levels were?

Yes. The season was shorter because particularly up here in Nordics, the summer arrived quite late and we needed the warm weather to trigger consumer demand. But the interesting thing is that when we talk to dealers, a lot of verbal comments is that not a bad season. And so at least that is good to hear. Then on the flip side, as we highlighted, there are defaults in our industry. And I think more in Finland than in the other countries at the moment, but not only Finland. And that's, of course, a little bit worrying that what's the shape and the state of health among our dealers. Now here, I would like to maybe also highlight one thing that when we look about -- look at those individual cases, they all have an individual story behind them, obviously. And in many cases, we're talking about dealers that are not pure play reflecting Duell's business. They are involved in other business, other products. And the challenges may also be linked to other business areas in the operation those companies had. So it's important to look deeper into the equation.

Yes. Then if you compare the Nordic countries and the Central Europe, so despite the challenging market, Nordic also performed pretty well. So looking forward, so how do you see that the Nordics versus the Central Europe will kind of go in the future?

It's true. Nordics fared after all fairly well, which is just a testament on the position we have in the Nordics market. Within the Nordics market, there's also variations. So there are some pluses and minuses between the countries within the Nordics. But maybe more important here is that when we look at Central Europe, those are significantly bigger markets and the potential for Duell to grow is more in the Central European market area. So this is our primary focus in terms of growth.

Then about the gross margin in Q4, so that was improved. What is behind the improvement?

That normally, we have a lot of products, a lot of categories. So it's where do we sell, what mix, what products do we sell. So it's -- if we compare to previous year, we have had, we can say, a favorable mix this time.

Yes, very good. Then about the, let's say, profitability improvement, what kind of actions are we talking about?

So it's a portfolio or an array of actions. So as I said earlier, we are targeting gross margin improvements, profitability improvements, and we're targeting net working capital improvements. So of course, it has the usual suspects such as its purchase operations, how can we improve margins with the work we do on -- in supply chain. And that work really starts with product assortment so that to make the decisions that where do we allocate our spending to drive the best benefits for profitability. It certainly has -- if I switch to net working capital side and inventory side, there it is really addressing inventory turnover, meaning that products, SKUs that don't move quickly enough that we adjust the inventory levels for, for those products that we keep up and improve the inventory turnover and free up capital from the inventory.

Okay. Related to that one, so when we are looking for the guidance, so when we have these actions, so why do we state that the adjusted EBITA would be at the same level, not higher than kind of previous year?

We are -- you have to remember, we are now in quite -- well, maybe quite early stage is an understatement. We are on the starting line. Now we made -- now we define this performance uplift project. Now we start executing it. And when -- as I said earlier, the guidance takes the starting point of how we see the market, the demand and the corresponding guidance based on that. And then going forward, we will revisit.

Then if we move to e-commerce. So as the online sales was kind of record high up to 30%, does it mean that we have, let's say, more bigger customers, fewer customers? But are they having kind of a bigger kind of negotiation power? And what will be the impact for the profitability in long term?

Yes, it's true that our customer demography, customer landscape is a broad range of significantly bigger customers than the smallest ones. So if you would kind of like take the spectrum, you can say you have the small family company on one end and you have the big corporation on the other end. And this is not new. This is how it's been over some time. And also when you compare the different countries, we can see that in the Central European market space, the customers tend to be larger organization. They tend to be multi-city, multiregional, multi-store, whereas in -- if you go, let's say, northern part of Nordics, this is maybe not so much the case. And -- but it's evolving. I would say that, of course, there is some difference also in purchase power, but there's also a difference in volume. And these are the considerations that, of course, we do always when we make business that we consider the profitability of it, yes, simply speaking.

So the major investments has been kind of building the IT stack, e-commerce. So are these costs kind of burdening our profitability? And how do we see that? Are we putting more effort kind of for the technology investments in the future?

Of course, there is a significant price tag to all investments. This is -- there's no -- that's clear. But I think the keyword here, it's an investment. It's not a cost. It's an investment that is needed and will -- that targets benefits going forward. So maybe if you look at it from a cash point of view, there is -- it absorbs cash, but it's investments to continue building a stronger Duell day by day.

Okay. Then the operating expenses were up year-on-year. So was this affected by the bad debt? And if so, how much?

Yes, the bad debt is, of course, one component into it. And yes, the number on a yearly level is around EUR 800,000, the impact there. But then we also need to see what we have been doing over the year. We have a little bit changed in, I would say, the, call it, skills level of some personnel group, taken in skills we have not had so far, so it's a little bit mix. And it's this time when we -- if you look at the hard numbers, it's a little bit up. Unfortunately, this time also when the sales is low, not growing that much, then the operating expense percentage also goes a little bit the wrong way. But in the long run, it's more that we follow that the percentage of OpEx should be in the right relation to the turnover.

Okay. Then we can go back to Finland. So as we announced the plans for the Tampere warehouse and also the change negotiations. So when can one expect that these are concluded? And how many people are involved in this matter?

So the change negotiations are ongoing, and they follow the set time frames and the set progress as really the foundation is there in the employment law. And I expect that these negotiations will conclude here within a few weeks, maybe earlier. So there's good progress in the negotiations. The case is quite straightforward, and then we move into the actual execution and once the decisions are taken on.

Okay. So as we are currently only in the planning phase, no decisions have been made. But how do you see that is there -- if this decision will be made, are there enough capacity both in Sweden and Finland to handle all the flow?

Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. So this is, of course, based on planning calculations on that note that how do we -- is there an opportunity for this? So yes, there's absolutely that possibility.

Yes. Then about this one specific topic about this bicycle benefit that the government decided to kind of cut. So how do you see that has impacted to the bicycle business overall?

It was certainly felt. I would call it a little bit of a shock wave kind of dynamics there where it was, first of all, a surprising proposal and the industry took it as a shock wave. And that shock wave basically arrived to the industry here in the early part of the summer, let's say, June or so. And okay, now we start to be in the point where I feel the industry has come to grips with what it means and how do we see a future after this political decision. And certainly, I believe the large trends of how we, as consumers, we in society like to use bicycle more in our daily lives in our commuting and the sports and hobby, this trend is clear. It's strong. So as a category, the fundamentals are there. It is unfortunate that these kind of incentives that have been a tailwind for the category now is -- now all of a sudden was a strong headwind. And going forward, I think it will be neutral.

Okay. I think we could go back to the guidance. This is kind of one of the most asked questions. So what kind of data we are basing our kind of the view and estimate internally and externally, so...

That's a very broad set of data, combining hard data. Both hard data from our business and our order books and so forth, but also a lot of soft data, of course, when we discuss with our customers and the industry in general. Not to forget also that the supply chain is a quite important sounding board for the industry in total. So when we discuss with a brand that may even be internationally exposed in the industry, then that's a great source for reading the market in overall. But this is the combination of hard data in the industry, hard data within Duell's workflows, soft data in direct touch points, soft data in indirect touch point and our industry knowledge.

Okay. Very good. Then still one question about the France since that seems to be the focus for Duell's, let's say, improvement actions. So what kind of time line we are thinking about, when we could get back to that track?

Well, of course, we're seeking the quickest turnaround possible. But given the size of the magnitude, we are realistic in the sense that this is not a turnaround in -- like you do in the street light and then you just go flat out again. It's more of a transition period that we need now here to make the right, let's say, reshuffle of how we do business in France and the product assortment, then the total.

Thinking about other operating countries, U.K., Benelux. So as Duell has acquired a number of companies, so how the integration is currently going on? And what are the key areas that we are working with?

The integration progresses. The key areas are very much related to linking all these businesses into the same workflows. Here, again, these IM-related tools of both front end and back end are extremely important. The reality is that a lot of those kind of developments are not done in an afternoon. They're more -- they're longer projects. So this, of course, affects. But what we normally can do and are doing in quite quickly is the brand assortment evolution and change. But also there, we are having to relate also to external factors such as suppliers, other channels, supply -- basically the deal, the rights we have with various brands for various regions. So it's -- you could say it involves ongoing negotiations as well.

Have we been successful to, let's say, sell our own house brands through these kind of companies?

Yes. I would say, by and large, in all the acquired companies, we have managed to establish house brands, some of them because this depends on what category and what demand we're talking about. And maybe I've used the example before that, of course, it's no possibility to sell house brand snow products in South Europe, but certainly possible to sell house brand motorcycle products there. So it's adapted to the consumer demand of those markets.

Very good. Probably as a final kind of note that you mentioned about this performance uplift project, so all in all, what does it include? And what are the kind of targets that we are aiming?

It includes a range of activities that addresses profitability improvement, starting from gross margin, also the efficiency side and then delivering gross margins and it include activities that allows increasing inventory turnaround and you could say, essentially releasing capital from the inventory to the result.

Very good. And as a note to the audience, if all the questions were not able to be answered, so there's always an opportunity to send questions to us, for me, [email protected] e-mail. So we will then come back to these topics. But I would like to end this webcast. And if you would like to give a final word and conclude the...

Famous last word. The famous last words.

Yes, the famous last words.

Well, still uncertainties in the market, happy that we are able to deliver growth, albeit slight growth, but to maintain growth pace in a challenging market. A profitability situation that needs a turnaround, and we will turn around and really, really happy to see that we are making progress in many of the development areas, be it then the things we drive in terms of e-commerce tools, et cetera, but also the result we are able to create together with our key customers and large customers.

Very good. Thank you, and we will come back then January 2026, mid-January with the Q1 report. But prior to that, we have also the Annual General Meeting taking place end of November, and you will hear about the decisions from that meeting later. Thank you very much, and see you in January.

Thank you.