Europris ASA (EPR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. It's 10 o'clock, and time to start today's presentation. It's a real pleasure to see you here and to welcome you to our shared webcast for Lekekassen and Europris. My name is Espen Eldal. I'm the CEO of Europris. And joining me on the call today, you will have Andreas Skalleberg, who is the owner and CEO of Lekekassen. In addition, I have Trine Englokken, the IR Manager of Europris, who will help me to make sure that we answer all the questions in the Q&A at the end of the presentation. The meeting is an open Teams meeting. [Operator Instructions] It's a very exciting day for both Europris and Lekekassen. With this acquisition, we position both companies for continued profitable growth. And we really look forward to start sharing best practices within all areas of our businesses. Europris is acquiring 67% of Lekekassen. And it has been of great importance for us that Andreas Skalleberg remain as CEO and owner of the company. We are very impressed by the way they have developed the team. The team in Grimstad developed the business until now, and we really look forward to working together with them in the future. The purchase price for 67% of Norway's largest online ToySpace NOK 501 million, and Europris has a preemptive right to acquire the remaining shares. The purchase price will be settled in cash. The acquisition is of great importance for Europris. And with this, we are expanding in an important product category and we gained access to very valuable e-commerce expertise. We see significant operational synergies through joint sourcing of products and services, and look forward to improve the retail offering to our consumers. Toys is a very important category in Norway, which -- where we see that all -- the specialist stores has been struggling for some time, and it has opened up a great potential for online sales. But still, we believe that toys is an important category in physical retail. And with this acquisition, we can have a broad selection online as well as putting the best sellers into all Europris stores across the country. We are acquiring Lekekassen Holding, which consists of the following group entities. You have TAS Import, which is the wholesale company that import toys and sells to the online and physical stores. Leif Skalleberg is the operational vehicle in Norway, which operates lekekassen.no and 2 physical stores in Norway. Shopsystem that is a technology company, developing e-commerce solutions for the group. Østerskogen 48 is the group's real estate company, which includes the newly expanded fulfillment center in Grimstad, and now operating 21,000 square meters. And we have Toyspace, which is the brand name of the online stores in Sweden and Denmark. I give the word to Andreas Skalleberg, who will give you a more detailed introduction to the company and the history. Andreas, the word is yours.

Thank you very much. I guess you guys can all hear me. It's been a crazy morning today. So I'm a little bit flabbergasted, to be honest with you. It's -- I'd like to stay in the shadows, in the background, and suddenly, I'm on national newspaper headlines, and it's a little bit different. But yes, I'll try to keep it short and sweet and not to get too overboard. I'm the third generation owner of the family company and the leader. Normally, with the third-generation, things go sour. But for -- in our case, we made some changes to go online. And we transformed the business in 2010, '11 to go online, and it's been a really success story for our company. We said that we had a passion for retail for almost 80 years. And we still truly believe in the retail model, and we are really excited about the partnership with Europris that we're entering into. The picture here is also something we're proud of. It's our fulfillment center in Grimstad. It's basically 4 building steps. It started in 2010 with 2,400 square meters and now we're up to 21,000 square meters. What I think is very interesting about it is that we think we can triple our business for -- through the existing facilities. So we believe that we have a really, really good plan for the future, and we can really boost growth for the coming 5 years now through the fulfillment center. And I just want to touch upon -- sort of before we get into the next slide, touch upon sort of the change of control and the succession planning. Obviously, with the growth rates we're -- we've been having for the last few years, we -- it was necessary for us to look at some kind of succession planning. My father is turning 67 in the fall. And we wanted to go out there. So we've got in contact with the HT corporate services in Oslo, and they have been our financial adviser in the process. And for the last few months, we had 4 offers from PE firms and Europris. But for me, it was a no-brainer. When Europris came on board with the management team and their philosophy as a retail company, and we truly believe in the retail business model, with the variety of products in the stores, then it was just a perfect match, and we wanted to get on board. And since then, it's been such a smooth ride with Eldal and the team. And I think we're just super excited today to start to work on the future instead of -- no disrespect to our lawyers, but it's not so much fun to work with lawyers as it is to work on operational stuff. So we're excited at least. I think I'll get to next slide, Eldal. Yes. And in terms of -- we like to talk -- we're -- I would say that we're quite obsessed with the word ecosystem in our company. You've seen the warehouses owned by the company. And we think that the ecosystem is a huge part of our success. We don't outsource. We in-source. We have developers in-house. We build strong team in-house. We have our own marketing agency. We don't like to pay for services. We like to build it ourselves. We don't want to rely on others. So I think that's -- I'm not saying that's for all companies. But for us, it's been a huge part of our success, is that we build stuff in-house. And we're proud of what we've managed to do from a technology standpoint and people business. We have, in my opinion, a really strong management team. So -- and I love the fact that -- it's not like we sit here today and say, we're a perfect e-commerce company. And pretty much every single meeting, we are sort of embarrassed about we need to improve on so many things. And I think that's also part of the success here, is that we're not sitting here today saying that we're good. We say that we have so many things we need to improve on. And I think that's what drives our motivation for the future, is that we come to work on Mondays, and we say, this week, we have to get faster, stronger, better. We have to improve conversion rates. We have to do stuff to make our sites better. And at least, that's what's driving the motivation for me as an owner, and I feel passionate about the way we work. Just the last point on this slide is that -- to the right here, you see 2 graphs. One is showing the group revenues and the bottom one is showing the group EBITDA. I think we're -- I'm not saying the only company, but we're one of the very few companies out there that like to talk about future earnings and how much we make. When you talk to most online companies, they preferred sort of pushed out to the future. We will make money in the future. We are obsessed with making money now. We're not talking too much about algorithms or fancy buzzwords like artificial intelligence. But we like to talk about building a proper business from scratch and try to grow on profitability, not just trying to get revenues up to as much as possible. And that was also a key when we started to talk to Eldal and the team, is that we saw they had the same mindset as we do. It doesn't help if you to grow revenues with 100% if EBITDA is not paying attention to what's happening with revenues. So we -- it's just a perfect match share. We think alike. And I think we can learn so much from Europris in the future. And I think we might be able to add some value as well to the company even though we're much smaller. So yes, that was me.

Great, Andreas. Thank you. And I love your passion for the business and the way you focus on the bottom line. That's fully in line with what we say. And like when we now see Europris and Lekekassen together, it's like it's the kid in the toy store meeting, the kid in the candy store, and joining forces, that will just be a magic match. And like you said, Andreas, it's a very good match when it comes to the corporate culture, the way we work and the way we think. But it's also a very strong strategic match that will drive synergies. And Lekekassen is basically ticking off all the strategic boxes of Europris. We've said for a long time that we will strengthen the price and cost position. We will improve the customer experience and drive customer growth. And Lekekassen will actually help to contribute to all these important initiatives. On strengthening price and cost position, we will start very fast with joint sourcing. That is especially for the Far East goods when it comes to seasonal items for spring/summer. We have a big assortment overlap when it comes to seasonal assortment. And doing sourcing together, we know for sure, pooling volumes will bring benefits to both companies. Lekekassen will get access to the Europris' resources in Asia for sourcing. And of course, within in -- on the cost side, there will be synergies, inbound and outbound freight in some areas, we will look into, like payment terms and so on. So we believe there are many synergies that will strengthen the price and cost position for both companies. On improving customer experience, we are really excited to see that, with Lekekassen's attractive product portfolio, we can actually improve the offering we have to our customers in the physical stores. So bringing best sellers of Lekekassen into the physical stores of Europris and then having the broad selection online, I think that's a perfect match and really show how that online and physical retail will work and melt together in the future. On driving customer growth, obviously, we get access with this acquisition to a very attractive customer segment. The average customer of Lekekassen is female in the 30s, which is the younger generation than what we see in the Europris stores. So getting this exposure to these attractive customer segments at an early stage is very important and attractive for us. In addition to that, like Andreas said, they are obsessed by developing things themselves, having control, and they have their own tech company. And we believe that sharing development of e-commerce and digital solutions will benefit both companies going forward. The planning and cooperation will commence immediately as soon as the competition authorities has given their approval, we will get started. And we are really excited to work with the experienced management team at Lekekassen. Andreas has built a very strong team and himself will remain as CEO and owner of the company. I will take up on the role as Chair of the Board. We have already established a road map to realize synergies. Sharing of best practices will start immediately as well as joint sourcing of products and services. But of course, on product sourcing, that will be subject to normal lead times. In the fall, I'm really looking forward to that, we will start testing of Lekekassen assortment in selected Europris retail stores, and the rollout will then be based on the results we see from the tests. With that, I think I just summarized that our ambition remains the same, that is to become the best discount variety retailer in Europe. And with this acquisition, I think we are really making a right move in that direction. So with this, we will open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] I think the first question is coming from Eirik Rafdal.

Eirik from Carnegie here. I've got a bunch, but I'll try to limit myself. I guess this kind of goes to both of you. And you talk qualitatively about the synergies. I think they're exciting. But could you share a bit more color on the synergies in NOK, and what we should expect there over the coming maybe a year or 2 or 3? And I also have a question to Andreas, and that it's if you could share a bit more color on the historical growth rates kind of pre-2018. Very, very impressive, both on revenue and EBITDA for '18, '19 and '20. But maybe a bit before 2018 as well. And I have 2 more, and then I'll limit myself. This one to Espen, just kind of the current share of sales of toys in Europris in terms of the size of the category. And also, I guess this one is for you, Espen, as well. You noted that, that many of the specialists have been struggling. We've seen Toys "R" Us go bankrupt. Kind of what gives you the confidence that you guys will succeed in physical toy sales when so many of the specialists have been struggling? I have a couple of more as well, but I think we should turn, give someone else a shot as well, and I can jump on later, it's okay.

Thank you, Eirik. I think I will start answering the questions directed to me and Andreas will fill in at the end. Your first question is regarding the synergies in NOK and quantifying this for the coming 2 to 3 years. Obviously, that is a difficult question. We are not able to give you exact answers to that. We have started exploring the possibilities. I think on the sourcing synergies, you will not see synergies until 2023 because of the lead times you have from Far East. And already now, we have placed most of our orders for the summer season '23 in order to get capacity at manufacturers. So that's a little bit ahead of us. But on -- of course, on inbound freight, we all know that Europris has a favorable deal with Maersk for freight costs. And we can put Lekekassen on the same agreement and -- or we can even start negotiating some payment terms and looking into these kind of synergies, which is more quicker and easier to grab. So we will explore this. And when we have the numbers, we will communicate. Regarding the share of toys in the Europris stores, it is below 5%. It has not been -- we are strong on the seasonal assortment for spring summer when it comes to the trampolines and the beach toys and small swimming pools inflatables. So all these, we are strong on. But we have not really succeeded on the toys because we are lacking access to the brands. And with Lekekassen, we get access to better brands, I think we can give our consumers a better offering. And that leads us over to your final question regarding the success of toys in physical stores. Of course, when the physical retailers are losing like 20%, 30% of the total sales due to online, which has happened in this business, it's still some potential to sell toys in physical stores. And many of the physical specialist retailers has closed down. So in many of the locations that Europris has a store, there are no other alternatives for physical sales of toys. And I think with our stores, with a broad selection, we are -- in an average store, we are giving 3x, 90 centimeters space for stores, plus some floor space during the seasons. So it's not the big space we have for toys. But by bringing in more brands, we will give our customers a better product offering. And I'm sure that for birthday segments, the bestsellers, they have definitely a place in future retail physical as well. And then you can get the broad selection online. So I'm sure that it's space for us to do this kind of deal in the market. I think, Andreas, the one almost a little bit on the sales side historically.

Yes. I'll comment on it. I just wanted to comment quickly on sort of why I think Europris is successful and why we want to do this. The big problem with toys stores is that you don't have the customer footprint that Europris has. All this traffic, you can really leverage this and make this a huge success to begin with, in my opinion. I might be too overly enthusiastic about it, but like I truly believe in the model where they have all these customers coming into their stores. And I think just redefining a little bit how we do toys will make it much better for both Europris and consumers. So that's just my 2 cents on that part of the business. When -- you asked me a question about historical growth rates before 2018. It's important to mention that before 2018, we had a huge and massive competitor in TOP-TOY. They ran the Toys "R" Us brand and BR Toys in Scandinavia. And they had a market share in Scandinavia of approximately, I would say, 40% to 45%. So -- but we still had massive growth rates year-over-year. We did grow like 70%, 80% year-over-year, 90% some years. And it's always been a plan for us to grow exponentially over the -- since 2013 and '14, we understood that this might be a very, very big business. So to comment on that, we had quite -- we're from the southern coast of Norway. If you know Norway, we're normally humble people, but we haven't been humble about our growth plans, to be honest with you. We always had huge goals. And we always talked about the NOK 1 billion before we even did NOK 100 million in revenues because we believe in the model and the setup we have.

And then we have a question from Joachim Harms.

This is Joachim Harms from CPP in Hamburg. First of all, congratulations to both of you for striking such a deal. I can imagine that it has been quite an intensive process. First question, maybe to Andreas. Can you elaborate a bit more why did you decide in the very end to put the company up for sale? You mentioned bids from private equity. I would like to understand your motivation there a bit better. Second question is to Espen. Can you elaborate a bit more how this specific acquisition relates to your strategy of being the best variety discount retailer in Europe? I can see that this is a specific vertical, and I do not see ultimately the link to discount, how you see that is relating? And maybe also connected to that, is that something you would expect to do more in the future.

Yes. I guess I'll get started, Espen. Why we wanted to put the company up for sale? It was basically just we wanted to -- we had so many companies getting in touch with us, to be honest with you, in 2020. And we decided that now it's about time. My father is 67, like I said. He's been working his hours for the last -- since 1974. And it was about time for us to sort of at least investigate what are the opportunities here. And as a fast-growing company as well, things changed a little bit when you go from NOK 100 million to NOK 500 million and you plan to go to bigger numbers. You have to get more corporate in your mindset. And we understood that we don't have that capability in-house. We -- it's better sometimes. Even though we like to in-source, sometimes, also understand that we have strengths and we have weaknesses. And one of our strengths are like we are very entrepreneurial. We like to develop. We like to create new things. But we also need someone to control our business as we grow to become a very big business. So we understood that we needed to go out there and search the market for sort of professional buyers and professional investors. To me, it was not at all about doing an exit. It was more about like we need to get to the next level of -- in our company, and we need to take this from -- which has always been our goal, to take this from a family company to a proper company that can go to the next level. So to touch on sort of the -- more on the actual bids. We had 4 IOIs coming in, and it was 3 from typical investor, private equity investing companies. It was Europris from the industrial side of the business. And like I said previously, it was really -- it was not an evenly matched fight for the others. We decided pretty early on that we want to continue with our Europris. We did a lot to -- we worked, quite honest, with Europris also in the beginning that we want to work with you, guys. So it was just a match. It was just like there's a match here.

Thank you, Andreas. Joachim, to elaborate a little bit more on the strategy part. I think this acquisition is a perfect match with our strategy. And Andreas operates with Lekekassen, a very price-focused company. They are a price leader when it comes to toys in Norway and Sweden and then potentially Denmark in the autumn. And for us, having low prices is the reason why we exist. And doing this acquisition, we will get access to brands at prices that we couldn't get in the past. So for us, this is strengthening the price position of the company. And it's also giving us a very attractive vertical. We can offer our consumers the bestsellers in the stores and then the wider selection online. And I think online shopping and physical shopping is a little bit different. Like Andreas said, the footprint of Europris, with 36 million customers transactions a year is massive. And we are exposing many customers for the products in our stores. While doing shopping, if you want to buy toys, you go to an online store. You do that very specific on your search, but you will get exposure of your products to much, much broader population than what you do online. So I think to -- getting this exposure. And for us, it's about exploring the online possibility for expanding the business. And we did a small acquisition back in March where we acquired 67% of Lunehjem in the Interiors segment. And I think this is a smart way of connecting the online retail and the physical retail. These are product segments that is performing well online, but also are performing well in the physical stores. So I think getting this connected is like the new way of retail. And I think this means that in the end, the physical and the online retail will melt together, and this is the start of that. So I think this really makes sense to -- where we can give our customers a better product offering in the stores and we will get even more customers exposed for the great products and the prices that Lekekassen has. Okay. Then the next question is from Markus Heiberg.

Congratulations with a very, very interesting deal here. I want to follow up a bit, my first question here, on the fundamental difference in your e-commerce operations, because on one side, you have these new 2 e-commerce pure players that are very focused on, say, home deliveries, et cetera, whereas your e-commerce operations in Europris are very focused on driving customer traffic to the stores because that's where you have your profitability. So I want a bit more clarity on how you want to integrate this and how this makes sense in -- together. That's my first question. And my second question is on the Nordic expansion, and the ambitions to grow in Sweden and Denmark. And what we can expect here? Because it seems like Sweden was a very important growth driver in 2020. And do you expect a similar development in Denmark? And also lastly to Espen, is there any synergies here with ÖoB? Those are my 2 questions.

Thank you, Markus. On the first one, when you ask how we should integrate this, and I will basically say we shouldn't integrate it because it's a great company that works well on their own, but we should take the best parts of Lekekassen and bringing it into Europris, and we should take the best experiences from Europris and share with Lekekassen. And I think that will strengthen both companies. So it's not about doing integration. I think Andreas needs to have a little bit of his freedom with its team in Grimstad. And continue to be an independent entity. So I think if you put power on the Europris store online, the selection is very broad. When you do online shopping, as a consumer, you are more targeted on the products you search. So doing a variety of retail on online is more difficult. We see clearly what we sell online is mainly related to seasonal items and more expensive items, and people do click and collect. I think if we sell some toys at NOK 99 or NOK 149 in our stores, that is not -- that is something that is really subject to online competition. Andreas basket is bigger online than it will be in our stores because the customers are more targeted. So I think this is just an add-on for basically both companies. And then so I think it works well together. Should not be integrated as stores. But on the technology side, we should learn a lot from each other, because Andreas has developed his own e-commerce platform. He's operating the same system as we are on our e-commerce. So I think it will speed up the process of developing good solutions for our customers and it could also make it less expensive in the future. I think that's how it works. I think I will leave the Denmark expansion over to Andreas, but I will quickly -- you had a question about the synergies towards ÖoB. And to be quite honest, we have not discussed this deal with ÖoB. But of course, doing joint sourcing, that is the basic idea of the ÖoB transaction. And when we -- with Lekekassen that adds more volume, that is, of course, interesting. Future-wise, if it's an idea to bring the Lekekassen products into the ÖoB stores, well, that could be, but it has not been discussed at this point. So Andreas, maybe you should comment on the Denmark expansion plans?

Yes, definitely. Just to be clear, we look at our business in 3 ways. We have Norway, Sweden and Denmark. We're extremely early days in Sweden yet. We just launched in May 2019. And we had a massive growth last year, and we expect a very good growth this year. So I don't want to get into specific numbers, but it's definitely growth -- good growth rates coming up. And Denmark, it's really hard for me to tell. We're launching there in the second half of 2021. We are confident that we have a good setup for Denmark as well. To speak numbers, I think it's a little bit early. Let's look -- let's just build a proper business there first and make sure we launch with enough products and a really good offering. We're more obsessed with the logistics setup. So we have set up a very good new logistics setup for Sweden and Denmark, which will deliver packages 12 hours faster than we do today. So we will get a much better logistics setup for the future, which I think will drive customer satisfaction for the future. So that's really our goal, to speed up deliveries and make sure that we have the same speed deliveries in Denmark and Sweden as we have in Norway. And I think that's key to our success in the future. And also, just I would comment quickly on sort of the -- we're obviously quite large in Norway. But I think there's a lot of growth to be taken out of Norway as well, and it's really our -- it's a really good market for us. And I think what I love about this deal with Europris is that it's really taking some of the risk down. We can also get into retail now with 268 stores plus our online sales. So I just think there's so much fun stuff going on right now. So I get a little bit excited. I should stop.

Okay. Next question is from Ole Martin Westgaard.

Hopefully, you can hear me. And congratulations with what looks to be a very interesting acquisition at an very interesting price. My first question is to Andreas. It's been a fantastic growth over the last couple of years. And obviously, the last years, we've been through, obviously, huge COVID effects in there. And I guess it's difficult to sort of separate hot from cold water. But how -- do you have any sort of feel for how we should think about COVID effects from last year? And how should we think about the structural growth going forward? If you have sort of -- any sort of structural growth rates that we -- you see in Norway. And how should we think about maybe Sweden and Denmark is a bit special, but any flavor on that would be very interesting.

Yes, definitely. Obviously, in -- the 12th of March last year, we saw the lockdown in Norway, especially just -- it was boosting our sales like crazy the same day. I was at the cabin, and I saw -- was like AWS alerts with high traffic, and it was just crazy. So obviously, there was a huge COVID effect in the early parts of 2020. What was interesting to me is that we've had growth year-to-date. And we did not expect growth year-to-date, to be honest with you, because we haven't had a lockdown this year. So I think what we see now, at leat in our industry, in the toy segment, is we see a huge shift to online shopping. And we've had so many happy customers in 2020 shopping with us in the spring and in the second half year. And we see that we really are able to get those customers to get back to us. And we think COVID just gave us another 1 or 2 years head start to the growth we had planned. So we just think it's more like -- it just boosted our growth rate a little bit. It's not like, we're not going to grow. It's more like, we just came to a higher level within just a few months. So we are optimistic about the future and we think growth will come.

Good. And maybe one follow-up for me. When you look at the profitability between the various countries, obviously, Norway, Sweden, is there any difference there in terms of gross margin on the products? Or do you see the same kind of pricing?

It's -- I don't want to get into too much specific details on, but we have obviously, there's -- we have a tool kit now that we can do differentiated pricing in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. And we will suddenly -- we were certainly test differentiated pricing in the future, but it's a little bit too technical for me to get into. But we have 3 different sites. And we will definitely look at sort of more differentiated approach to e-commerce in the future.

And then a final question for me. Obviously, you have access to a much more broader variety of products and brands than Europris has been offering. Is there any trouble down the road of sort of putting those brands in Europris stores, in agreements that you have with these vendors? Or you don't consider that to be an issue?

I personally don't consider it to be an issue. I think we have very strong relationships. And I think we'll get back with a strong retail team at Europris. And we'll present the plan that's more than -- it's not just putting the items in the shelf. It's more of a -- it's a brand plan, it's a toy plan. It's more -- it's not just we have planograms, so we do stuff properly instead of just toys will be done properly, not just throwing items into the selves.

Thank you, Ole Martin. Then the next question is from Petter Nyström.

Thank you Espen. And congratulation to both of you. I actually got answer here from Ole Martin on the brand availability, but I can have a follow-up on that. That's probably then to Andreas. Can you also share some comment on your brands availability over time, and how that development has been?

Brand availability over time, in the toys segment, we never had problems with brand availability. We've always been -- since early days, we had all the brands available to us. So it's not -- there's never been an issue for us to get the brands we want basically. There are every now and then some certainly like high end, more like the fashion design brands that don't want to get into us, but that's not our niche either. We want to focus on the big selling high-volume brands. We don't want to go into too much -- too specifics on those. So I don't consider that an issue at all. No.

Okay. Thank you. And then the next question is from Kristoffer Pedersen.

This is Kristoffer Pedersen from Nordea Markets. Congrats on the transaction. I have a couple of questions. Andreas, do you know how much of toy sales in Norway is online in the overall markets? And also, you've had an impressive growth in EBITDA here. And given that you have ample capacity in the fulfillment center, I guess also the cash flow will be strong in Norway going forward. Can you talk a little bit about this?

Yes. I'll touch on the share of sales and how much we think is going online. It's hard. We have estimates that we believe it's about 25% in Norway right now. We see -- in more e-commerce developed markets, we see e-commerce getting up to 50% like in Germany and the U.K. And we think just a we're going to ride this wave for the next 2 years. We think the online toys growth would just explode for the next 5 years in the online business. The second part of your question, I'm sorry, I forgot the second part.

Yes. I was wondering how the -- you have seen a very good growth in EBITDA. And given that you have quite a lot of capacity, as I mentioned, in the fulfillment center, I guess the cash flows will be quite strong, at least for the Norwegian operations.

Yes, yes. We overinvested. We might be a little bit crazy. We overinvested in the warehouse. We don't want to be -- now we're sort of maxed out the warehouse that we can build here in Grimstad, and the next step would be to build a warehouse somewhere else. So we think it's really good for the future cash flow that we're seeing right now, that we have this warehouse that can really take us -- I believe we can triple our business, but let's say, 2.5x on today's level easily through the existing warehouse.

Thank you, Kristoffer. Then we have Eirik Rafdal with the question.

Again, Eirik from Carnegie. Just 2 last ones from me. And I guess it's a bit of a follow-up on Kristoffer's question then on margins for Andreas. And you've taken massive steps up on margins every year the last 3 years. Just kind of your thoughts in terms of what you think is kind of steady state margin for Lekekassen is. And also one for Espen. Just in terms of the ÖoB transaction, does this affect your priorities in any way, like considering implementation time, tying up management resources, et cetera, With Lekekassen? Just your thoughts on that as well would be great.

Do you want me to start, Espen, or should -- you start?

No. Just go ahead, please.

Yes. Talking about margins, we could spend an hour -- another hour on how we think about margins. When you do online business, you have to think about margins in a very different way from how you think about margins in the retail business. If you do 30% margin on the LEGO box, it's really good. But if you do 30% margin on a big heavy toy house where -- which ships expensive, it's not good business. So we think about margins from a cost base. How much does it cost to pick? How much it costs to ship? What are the payment terms? How fast can we turn our products? And it's complicated. I don't see margins going up in the future, but again, we're cost based. We try to optimize our cost base every day. We've shown for the last 2 years that with a scalable business. Our variable cost is going down in the company year-over-year. It's always going down. And that's our focus. We want to make sure we have a really good cost base in our company so we can grow profitably and with tough competition.

Thank you. And Eirik, your final question to me on how this might impact the transaction, I would just have to say it will not impact at all. I think this acquisition is something we do in parallel. And the sourcing and the startup operation with Lekekassen is a very important and strong category project for us. That doesn't really involve that much resources from our side, except for the category managers in that specific category. So this is something that we can do in parallel. It will not impact our capacity on the management side to do ÖoB and it will not impact the financial capability to do ÖoB. As you know, this will -- this transaction will be settled in cash. We have sufficient cash facilities available. And ÖoB transaction is to be settled in shares, and we have those treasury shares on hand. So this will not impact ÖoB transaction at all. Thank you. Then it's still Ole Martin Westgaard has his hand up. I'm not sure if that is a new question coming from you, Ole Martin. Then the hand was gone, which I believe means that we have come to an end of this Q&A session. And would like to thank everyone for participating. I hope you got the information you wanted. And if you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to contact Trine Englokken at Investor Relations with Europris. So once again, Andreas, thank you very much for starting this cooperation with us. We are really looking forward to it. And I think you all can see that Andreas, he will drive also Europris forward in the future. So thank you very much. Have a nice day.

Thank you.