GN Store Nord A/S ($GN)

Earnings Call Transcript · March 11, 2026

CPSE DK Consumer Discretionary Household Durables Shareholder/Analyst Calls 60 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Jukka Pertola

Executives
#1

Good. Thank you. Good morning again. And my name is Jukka Pertola, and I'm Chair of GN Store Nord's Board. Welcome to all of our shareholders here at GN's head office and also welcome to everyone who joins online. Welcome also to the Board of Directors, my fellows in the Board and to GN's executive management and leadership. And very much welcome to our auditors as well. Welcome. A few practicalities. I will speak English as you hear, and so will our CEO, Peter Karlstromer. Our Chair of the meeting, [ Mikael Philip Schmidt, ] will speak Danish and the slides behind me will also be in Danish. If shareholders have any questions or comments, it's perfectly fine to speak Danish. If you need translation to either Danish or English, you can borrow a headset where you can hear instant translation. The headsets are down there. The meeting will be streamed online in Danish and English. As stipulated in our Articles of Association, the Board appoints the Chair to conduct the meeting, and we have asked partner with [indiscernible], Mikael Philip Schmidt to preside over the meeting. And with that, I would like to give the floor to Mikael.

Unknown Executive

Executives
#2

Thank you. Thank you for appointing me Chairman of the meeting. My first job as Chairman of the meeting is to confirm that the meeting has been legally and lawfully convened and that it is quorate. First of all, I'd like to say that I've gone over the convening notice and other documents, and I confirm that the meeting has been legally and lawfully convened. The convening notice was sent out the 16th of February 2026 via a corporate release to NASDAQ Copenhagen and on the company's website, and it was sent by mail to shareholders having so requested. With regard to the information of the convening notice and the information that must be made available to shareholders, I also confirm that the company has complied with all the requirements stated in the articles of the company and Danish company law. The agenda contains the usual topics that you find on AGMs. You see them on the screen behind me. And I also confirm that in this connection, the company is in compliance with the requirements set out in Danish company law. So you see here the items. And then we have under 9, a proposal from the Board of Directors concerning the acquisition of treasury shares. We'll come back to that later. All proposals can be made by means of simple majority, and the vote concerning the remuneration report is merely advisory. So on this background, I find that the AGM is also quorate. Before we go over to transacting the business on the agenda, I can inform you that we have just found that a nominal amount of DKK 263,276,000 is available. On the basis of the postal votes received and proxies, it's also possible to find that their support to the company's Board's proposals. So there will be no votes in the course of today. But that should not prevent us from having a good and proper discussion. Let's go back to the business on the agenda. I intend to do it in the following manner. After we have dealt with each item on the agenda, I will ask if anyone has comments or questions. If you wish to take the floor, just raise your hand, and I will find you. And don't forget to state your name if you want to put a question or make a comment. If there's nothing by way of request for the floor after an item, I take it as a sign that it has been adopted. Items 1 to 4, which is the report, approval of the annual report, discharge and distribution of profit will, as usual, be dealt with in one go, which means that our Board Chairman, Jukka Pertola, will go over the report, whereafter CEO, Peter Karlstromer, will present the annual report and the proposal for distribution of profit. After that, it will be possible to put questions, and I will then go over to the formal adoption of the proposals contained under items 1 to 4. So let me hand over to Chair of the Board, Jukka Pertola, who will later hand over to Peter Karlstromer. You have the floor, sir.

Jukka Pertola

Executives
#3

Thank you, Mikael. During 2025, uncertain trade policies and macroeconomic weaknesses presented significant challenges to consumers and companies around the world, including to GN. But throughout the year, management and employees worked hard with what is within the company's control to mitigate the negative impact from tariffs and other headwinds in our markets. Needless to say, it was quite a challenging year. I will now take you through the highlights of the year. And after that, our CEO, Peter Karlstromer, will later on give you more insight into the business and how we view our opportunities in '26. But let us first take a look at the high-level financial results. In '25, we saw a decline in organic revenue of 1%, leading to a total revenue of DKK 16.8 billion. Our bottom line result, EBITDA came in at DKK 1.9 billion, which was equal to an EBITDA margin of 11.4%. Needless to say, we would have liked to see further growth in revenues and thereby also profitability. But that said, the Board is pleased with GN's ability to manage the results well in the difficult business environment that we faced in '25. Prudent cost control, operational agility and good execution in our markets resulted in solid profitability and good cash generation even if we faced a small decline in revenues. This led to free cash flow of DKK 1.1 billion, which enabled us to reduce our debt with DKK 800 million. At the same time, we have strengthened our business fundamentals. Our strategic and execution capabilities across GN have greatly improved. We have placed solid investments in innovation, technology and operations, and we are confident that all this will support profitable growth in 2026 and beyond. Our CEO, Peter Karlstromer will, in a few minutes, provide more details of our divisional performance and how we view the business opportunities ahead of us. Let me instead turn to another set of important performance metrics, our ESG performance. We continue to be committed to run GN in a sustainable and responsible way. Our progress in '25 means that we are on track to meeting our sustainability targets. This is described in detail in our sustainability statement, which is part of our annual report. We have reduced carbon emissions in Scope 1 and 2 by 53% compared to '21, which is the baseline year for our climate targets. Scope 1 and 2 are the part of our supply chain that is fully in our own control, and we are on track to reach our 2030 targets. For Scope 3, which is partner emissions that we are only indirectly in control, we have reduced emissions by 33% and have, as such, already reached our 2030 targets. And when we, as a company, track and report our impact on the world, we must also report on positive impacts. For GN, there is a clear positive impact on society in terms of our capacity to offer millions of people help to hear better. And we are proud that currently more than 12 million people carry our hearing aids, which helps them to hear better and live better lives. GN pursues to have a diverse workforce as we believe this supports continued innovation, customer satisfaction and performance. This also applies to the Board and to all leadership levels. At senior leadership levels, GN currently has 31% female leaders, which is close to our target of 33% to be reached by the end of June. So the target is still reachable. We continue to take various initiatives to further increase diversity in leadership. At the Board level, we currently have 43% female members elected by general meeting, and this is in accordance with the targets we have set, and the Board will continue to evaluate the composition, diversity and competencies of the members to ensure that we have all what we need to fulfill our obligations. That we are on track is also recognized by various ESG rating institutions, which have given GN high marks, as you can see at the bottom of this slide. Now let me turn to dividends and share buyback. While our goal continues to be to deliver good shareholder return through a combination of dividend payments and share price appreciation, we must recognize that this has not been the case for the financial year '25 with the tariff and macroeconomic headwinds I mentioned earlier. Due to our strong cash flow, GN's net interest-bearing debt decreased by DKK 800 million to DKK 8.9 billion, which gives us a leverage of 3.8x. As our long-term target is leverage rate of 2x, we need to continue to pause dividends and share buybacks until the leverage is closer to the target. Now let's turn to remuneration of management and the Board. The various components of remuneration offered at GN are set to balance the sustainable management of GN's strategy and long-term ambitions with the achievement of short-term results. GN's remuneration policy is governed by the Board's Remuneration Committee and is approved by the Board and by the Annual General Meeting. In line with the principles in the remuneration policy and based on the company performance, executive management received the remuneration that you can see on the slide. For a full and detailed account, I refer to our remuneration report, which is available at the company's website. Board remuneration in 2025 totaled DKK 9.6 million based on the principles in the remuneration policy and the fee amounts that were approved by the Annual General Meeting last year. This is shown on the slide and also detailed in the remuneration report, which has been public on GN's website since February 5. This fee structure was approved by last year's Annual General Meeting, where we also mentioned that the Board's intention to improve its governance structure by combining the functions of the Remuneration Committee and the Nomination Committee. This combination into one Remuneration and Nomination Committee has carried out -- was carried out immediately after the Annual General Meeting last year and has worked very well throughout the year. The Board proposes that the base remuneration of the financial year '26 remains at the same level as the year before. We do, however, propose a slightly adjust -- to slightly adjust the fees of the Board committees. This is to ensure that the committee fees more accurately reflect the workloads of each committee. This will strengthen internal consistency and will still keep the total level of remuneration for the Board unchanged. You can see the new proposed fee structure on the slide, and this was also described in the notice to convene. Each year, the Board evaluates the composition, diversity and competencies of the Board as a whole as well as each individual Board member special competencies. This is to ensure that GN has a well-functioning Board with adequate global experience, functional competencies and industry background, which ensures that we can fulfill our obligations. Again, in '25, the Board conducted its evaluation by involving external assistance so the Board could get an objective outside in view. The evaluation process was based on input from all Board members and 7 executives. The results of the evaluation, including practical recommendations were discussed at the Board meeting in December '25, and the report on the process, evaluation and conclusions is available on our website. The general conclusions were that the Board has a good working relationship and a constructive dialogue with the CEO and the rest of the management and that the members are empowered to express their thoughts and opinions. Board meetings are conducted in a manner that ensures open relevant discussions and meaningful participation. We have a style and tone in the Board that promotes open, honest and constructive debate. And the Board has good composition in terms of professional competencies, diversity and backgrounds. Based on the evaluation, the external adviser provided some recommendations, which include establishing a clearer succession processes with more depth and visibility to talent pipelines. The Board will also focus further on strategy processes in the rapidly changing global landscape with geopolitical challenges. Now let's look at the proposals for the composition of the future Board. Our current Board consists of 7 members elected by the Annual General Meeting and 3 members elected by the employees in accordance with the Danish Companies Act. GN's Articles of Association require 5 to 9 Board members to be elected by a general meeting. Our longest serving member elected by the Annual General Meeting, Helene Barnekow, has decided not to stand for reelection. Helene, could I ask you to stand up so the shareholders can see you. Helene joined the Board in 2013 and has added great value and insight to the Board based on her vast professional experience and strong leadership competencies. On behalf of the Board and the whole GN, I would like to sincerely thank you, Helene, for all you have done for GN during the many years. Please give Helene a hand. With Helene stepping down, the Board proposes that 6 members are elected by this Annual General Meeting, which is within the stipulated 5 to 9 Board members we need the General Meeting to elect. Thus, the Board proposes -- and now when I mention your names, please stand up dear colleagues. We propose the reelection of Klaus Holse, Kim Vejlby Hansen. Kim is not able to be present today. Jorgen Bundgaard, Charlotte Johs, Lise Skaarup Mortensen; and then finally, myself, Jukka Pertola. All the candidates are considered independent as defined in the Danish recommendations on corporate governance. As I mentioned, GN's employees elect 3 members of the Board in accordance with the Danish Companies Act. The term of these members is 4 years, and the employees have just elected new members for the term of the next 4 years. First, I would like to thank the 3 employees that have been members of the Board for the past term. And again, if you can stand up and I mentioned your name, Leo Larsen. Leo has been member of several terms since 2007. So as such, he is the longest serving member of the Board. Cathrin Inge Hansen has served since 2022 and as has Klaus Holmbeck Madsen. So thank you very much for all of you on behalf of the Board. Warm thanks for everybody for your service to the Board and to GN. For the next term of 4 years, GN employees have elected and again, please stand up, Jens Kirkelund, who is Senior Manager in Audio Engineering. Lasse Emil Holmegaard Korff, who is Lead Hardware Engineer; and Anders Roikjær, who is Head of Regional Operations. So a warm welcome to all of you to the Board. We are looking forward to our collaboration in the coming years. With this, I would like to ask our CEO, Peter Karlstromer, to provide the shareholders with some more detail on the performance of the company and our business divisions and give some more color on how we are viewing our opportunities in the years in front of us. Peter, over to you.

Peter Karlstromer

Executives
#4

Thank you, Jukka. And also a very warm welcome from myself to all of you being here as well as attending online. Thank you so much for coming. So as Jukka said, I will talk about mostly the future where we're going. But before doing that, I wanted to make a few remarks on the year we just had. I think it's fair to say it was a testing year for us as a company, and I would say also for you as shareholders. There were many macroeconomic headwinds for us, both in terms of demands in our markets and as well as the whole volatility around trade and tariffs that is impacting a lot of companies like us that producing the majority product in Asia and selling them around the world. These tariffs had also indirect effects because it was not only us that were affected. It was companies that were our customers and many customers tightening the belt to essentially save some money and buying less. So it's also weakened global demand in many areas. At GN, we took the stance early. We are here to control what's in our control. We really need to focus on what we can influence, and we put in motion a significant program to handle the situation. When we started this, the majority of our products were produced in China, and they were sold around the world. And with the tensions building up, we realized we rapidly need to further diversify where we produce our products. The good news is that we had a lot of advanced plans for how to do that already developed, and we had started to implement them. But I will say in a relatively short time, we were moving a significant part of our production to different countries and different setups. And I will say that myself, I would like to say thank you to all employees involved in this because this was essentially work around the clock to help us with this new setup. I am happy to say that at this point in time, we have actually completed that transition. Today, we can manufacture all major products in at the minimum 2 locations. In most cases, that is China and one more Asian countries. So this helped us to navigate the geopolitical tariff situation very well, but I would say it's also a very sound setup to handle other kind of shocks and uncertainties. So I think this has created a stronger setup for us. I should also say that the year was not only about manufacturing, it was also a lot about what we did commercially. We, of course, increased prices in several areas to also mitigate the impact of all these extra costs, in particular, in the U.S. markets. Our customers do not like when we increase prices, but I must say they accepted it. I think everyone understood the situation. And also, of course, many of our larger competitors did similar actions. In parallel with handling all this, I must say there's been a very healthy development of the product development and the portfolio development. We really advanced several development projects in our R&D to really advance our product portfolio across the divisions of Hearing, Enterprise as well as Gaming. So the way I would summarize '25 is that it was a very difficult year in many ways. We managed to navigate this as well as we ever could and mitigate a lot of the possible impact on us. We also used the time, I would say, to really further advance the product development. So while the results were not at all where we wanted them to be in absolute terms, I do think we need to feel satisfied in relative terms. And I also think in many ways, the company is stronger now than what we started the year. Let me -- I mean highlight some of the numbers, and Jukka mentioned them before, but let me just give a little bit of color on the '25 numbers before moving into the '26. So as Jukka mentioned before, the overall company declined with 1% in revenue organically. There were a bit of a different development if you look on the different parts of the company. Our Hearing business grew 5%, which was faster than the market. And I do like to highlight our Hearing business have actually been growing faster than the market for 4 years in a row. Our Hearing business have been the fastest-growing Hearing business in our industry. So I think that in spite of this difficult year, this happened and our Hearing business was less affected by it. The enterprise business, though is where most of the challenges, as I mentioned before, really took a hold on us. And here, we had a decline of 6%, explained by a lot of the factors I went through here a little while ago. And then gaming, similar to enterprise, also had a lot of headwinds, ended up at 2% negative growth. I think it's fair to say that the tariff situation in particular, provided a lot of these headwinds making it difficult to grow. And just to clarify for our shareholders, we have tariff exposure on our enterprise and gaming businesses, but we actually exempt from the tariffs on the hearing aid side. That's why we see a little bit of less impact there. And then if we look on the essentially profitability of the company, we had a profitability of 11.5% margin, and that resulted in a cash flow of a bit more than DKK 1 billion. So if we look on all this, all these moving pieces, those of you that looked on the results over time, you will notice that these results are relatively similar to the results we have in '24. So the way I think you can say that this was a year with a lot of things happening, a really difficult year, and we're fighting back with everything we had and in some way, managed to stand still. We didn't advance. We had aspiration to do more. We wanted to grow more as a company. We wanted to further improve our margins. It was difficult last year, but we defended well and we're standing still. So now I think '26 is all about resuming that momentum of growth and profitability improvement. So let me lay out a bit how we think about that for the 3 different divisions we have. So if I can start with the Hearing division, those of you that have followed the Hearing market or us as a company, you know that this is a relatively stable market. There are aging populations around the world. And what's very positive, people are healthy or longer in life and like to live a full life longer. And as such, we would like to help to hear well even when they're getting a little bit older and the Hearing normally is taking a step back. So the structural demand for hearing aids is very strong. And you can see here, it's a very nice growth that has been intact many years. And last year, the market actually grew also, but a little bit less than normally because even if the market is resilient, there is still some impact on the consumer confidence, how much money people have to spend around the world. So it was a slightly less growth. But even in this environment last year, we grew 5%. If we look on this year, we do expect a similar market growth around 3%. We believe though we can outgrow that another year. So that will be 5 years in a row. And we have said that we will be able to grow between 3% and 7%. The reason we think we can continue to outpace the market is that we have very strong products already in the market, and we also plan for further launches later in the year. So I do think we have a very healthy development process and progress that help us to continuously innovate and bring new products to the market underpinning this growth in a relatively stable market environment. So we do expect another good year in Hearing for '26. So then if I can move on to the Enterprise business. And let me first recognize that this business was very healthy, growing for a long time, and then it completely exploded during COVID time. It grew with several hundred percent. But now it's been in several years of decline, which has been very testing and difficult for us as a company. And I would say for you as investors also because a lot of the reasons for some of the pressure on our share price is because of this market has been in decline, making the enterprise business having a difficulty to grow in a healthy way. We think though that we are standing in for some changes in the market that can be very attractive for the underlying market growth. And the way we would like to describe it, and we're trying to illustrate it here on this page is that if we take a step back and see what is this market about? It's essentially communication. We communicate at work, and we do that in online meeting on hybrid meetings. This trend started to really take off around 2014, '15 with the introduction of the Teams platforms and Zoom platforms, and we were there with the great products where you really could have very good quality headsets to have good meeting experiences. I think we were really part of creating the standard for what we call professional headsets. And then we benefited as a pioneer from very healthy growth for many years. And then as I mentioned, then during the COVID years, but it was not only COVID, it was more like the adoption become widespread. But during COVID, I think this is about hybrid work and working remotely, I mean, it definitely become a standard for everyone. It became a necessity, of course. And then that really had the market to explode in growth, and we benefited significantly from that. As I explained, there have been difficult years essentially adjusting from that base. What we think we are now facing is actually third horizon. There is a lot of talk about AI, of course. You cannot have escaped that any of you. Some of you are probably more in the details of it and some of you are more reading the headlines about it. But it is essentially changing the way we work. It will automate a lot of more things in the workplace. It will make employees much more productive, but it will likely also change how we work together with our computers. And if you ask the big PC manufacturers or Microsoft or the big companies, they really believe we will have a different way of interacting. Today, it's a lot about typing and combined with a mouse in many cases. And in the future, we will believe we will speak much more to the machines. And that might sound a little bit strange, Will we sit and talk to the PCs, but that is actually what they believe we will do. And the reason is quite simple. it is that we speak on average around 3x faster than what we type even if you are a very good typer. And also, we understand things better than listening than reading. So we believe this is around the corner. And it will not only require a new type of headsets that are better, it will likely also, I mean, increase the need for headsets overall because in an open workspace where everyone will sit and talk more, you need good communication solutions. So we think this is a very good time to actually launch a new set of products. What we did was in the first era, we launched what we call was Evolve series. And then the second era here on the page, we launched the Evolve2 series for professional headsets. And actually, this month, we are launching the Evolve3 headset line. And some of you might have seen them out in the entrance. If you didn't, hopefully, they're still there when you walk out and you can take a look. It's really what we believe taking the headset experience to next levels. These are the headsets in the picture. These are the premium headsets. We call them the Evolve 385 and 75. And we really believe they will take the communication experience to completely new levels. The first thing I should say, I think that looks great. And that you can say why I'm talking about that. We think that's actually very, very important because today, a lot of people at works are selecting what to wear on the head based on how they look and several today actually still using consumer products because they think they look better. So we have designed these products to have a better look. And you can see they don't look like a traditional office headset with a boom arm. These are without boom arms and in very sleek design, and we also have it in black and the warm gray. But do not mistake yourself for this being just good-looking products. They are also much better performing products. The noise cancellation in these products and how they treat your voice pickup is unparallel to what we've been having before. You can actually have a meeting with this product in a very noisy open landscape without any noise entering your meeting. You can be in a cafe or in a busy airport, taking a walk outside in the wind. And there are even some examples on YouTubes where people have a meeting and a conversation next to fully running a chain saw. And it works. The technology is just amazing. And this is what we call the AI sound processing. So essentially, we have trained the headset to recognize spoken words. And that has not been possible in the past. It's a complete new way we're processing the sounds. And therefore, you're getting this noise cancellation to completely new levels. So it is a bit of a technological breakthrough. So the product looks great, but I will say that perhaps even more important, it's really a step change in what to expect from a headset. And then I will say also in addition to this, they continue to be what we call enterprise grade. And what we mean with that is, of course, at the highest security standard, but also, I mean, helping an IT department to manage them so they know exactly where the headset are. These are requirements from the largest customer. Without that, they're not comfortable having them connected to the workplaces. So we are very proud of this. We have launched them now, and this will support our business. And then also towards mid or second half this year, we will launch more products into this Evolve3 line. And these products business-wise are perhaps even more important because these are the mid- and low-level entry-level products where we do the majority of our business. This high-end products is approximately 15% of our enterprise business. The bulk of the business is sitting in the mid-tier, which will come later this year. And these products come later this year, we are equally proud of them and believe they also will provide a very good differentiation. So all in all, what I'm saying is that the market -- there are forces at work in the enterprise market, we think will help the market to get back to growth. We already see some stabilization. We are seeing the business is growing in U.S. and APAC. We're seeing still declines in EMEA, but some level of improvements. But with the help of an improving market and with the help of the headsets we're launching, we do have a high aspiration for the year to turn the business back to growth and have shared a planning assumption here between flat and 6% growth for enterprise. Let me go to gaming to just round off this update. Some of you might be gamers in the room. And if you're not, it's not too late. There are more and more gamers around the world. There is a steady increase of gamers. And actually, the average age of gamers is steadily going up in ages. And what we think is very encouraging also is that today, half of every new gamer is a woman. This is not teenage boys any longer. This is really something that's broad. And we're very proud to have SteelSeries as, I would say, an innovation leader in this segment for gaming equipment. SteelSeries have, for a longer period of time, benefited from this market growth, but also have been growing faster than the market due to great product introduction and a very strong brand. And you can see the market share evolution here on the left. SteelSeries is primarily operating in headsets keyboard and mice, and that's the market share as you see there. If we look into another future, also here, there's been a bit of a slowdown in the market growth due to the consumer sentiments. These are consumers that are gamers, of course. And with the pressures we have on the global economy, there is a bit of less buying even of gaming equipment. But still, the market is fairly stable, and we believe that with the healthy products we have to introduce, we should be able to grow the coming year. Actually, we have said between 17% and 13%, which is really to put out a fairly high ambition, and we feel confident around that, thanks to the good set of product introductions we have in the pipeline. So we look forward to a good year here in the gaming side. So if I tie all this together, if we can get the next slide here. If I tie all this together for our group for '26, this is our guidance. We have said we are having a guidance towards the market to grow our business between 3% and 7%, which is, of course, a very healthy step-up from the difficult '25, thanks to the good things I just shared with you. In terms of the margin, we have an ambition to increase the margin between 0% and 2% this year, which will mean a margin between 11.5% and 13.5%. So this year is really to -- for us to get back on track, thanks to all the great initiatives I described to get the company back into growth and into profit expansion. I hope you found that helpful and look forward to taking the questions here a little bit later. Thank you so much.

Unknown Executive

Executives
#5

Thank you, Jukka Pertola and Peter Karlstromer for these presentations. It's now possible to comment or ask questions to the Chairman's report or the presentation of the company's annual report, the proposal concerning discharge of Board management and the proposal concerning the application of profits. Prior to the AGM, Claus Berner Møller from ATP has asked for the floor. So I now give the floor to Claus Berner Møller. Afterwards, other people who may so wish can get the floor. And please state your name if you ask for the floor. But first, Claus Berner Møller from ATP.

Claus Møller

Analysts
#6

Thank you. As you heard, I'm Claus Berner Møller, I represent ATP. I'd like to thank you for the report and the review of the annual financial statements. '25 was the third year running with a decline in revenue, 7%. EBITDA fell by 11%. The free cash flow was in line with last year. So debt was reduced by 8.5%. Many of the difficulties in '25 were caused by tariffs that affected GN hard. Some of the production had to be moved to other countries in Asia. This relocation has now been completed, but tariffs will also have a negative impact on earnings in '26. So that's why I have the following question. What is the negative impact from tariffs that you have as part of your guidance for '26? Another important reason for the problems is Enterprise had negative organic growth of 6% last year. There's a reason to -- for renewed optimism. You have a new series of headsets. 6 years ago, you introduced the Evolve2 series is now finally being replaced by Evolve3. The launch started around the 1st of March this year. So this is early days. But I'd like to ask you how these products have been received. Have you done any test marketing? What has been your experience? I have been shown the new product that is really fancy as new functionality can be used in very noisy surroundings. This was a convincing presentation that I saw. One of the reasons why investors have been a bit reluctant concerning Evolve3, the impact of AI because many analysts believe that the market will be reduced because of AI. GN believes that AI will be a positive, will influence our Evolve3 series positively, sales positively. Could you give us more reasons for your optimism there? And there might be sort of a timing issue here. The market will first be negative perhaps and then subsequently, positive because of the development of AI. There are also parts of GN that have shown a good growth. Hearing has given 13%, 10% and 5% growth in '23, '24 and '25. You've succeeded with that in a difficult market, GN has won market shares. The tough conclusion of the share market for '25 well caused by a disappointing top line was 18%, 19% down on the price of the share. So that was followed a downturn also in '24. So shareholders have had a tough year, but hope that '26 will be the turning point. Let's hope so. Thank you to everyone in GN who have stood firm. And I wish to wish the leaders and the employees all the best for the coming years, the challenges that you will see.

Unknown Executive

Executives
#7

Thank you. I'd like to hear if there are any comments from Board and management.

Peter Karlstromer

Executives
#8

Thank you, Claus, for a good summary of both '25 and the last few years, and I think you do that in a very balanced and accurate way. Let me come to the questions you're posing to us. As I shared here in my brief speech here before, the tariffs is a headache for us and it was a significant headache for us in '25. The way we have planned for the tariffs is that we have taken a very pragmatic approach to it saying that we don't think they will go away. We have just planned them to stay. There are scenarios where they can get better. There are scenarios where they probably can get even tougher. And for everyone's understanding, we now have around 20% tariff on the business we're doing in the U.S. for enterprise and gaming. I do think that -- so we don't think it will become better. But the changes we put in place last year have found some kind of new balance. We did take a lot of the transition cost of moving the production, as I mentioned, last year. We also increased prices last year. So we're entering this year in much better balance than what we entered '25. And as such, we actually don't think it will have a negative impact on us. You could even argue that margin-wise, it will have a slight positive impact on us because we actually took quite a lot more cost last year than the cost we need to take this year. The remaining part, which is a concern of ours is more what do all these tariffs and price increases that we and others have done due to the demand in the U.S. And that I think we need to somehow monitoring and find out all kind of market assumptions, both for enterprise as well as gaming, are markets growing a bit less than normal. If we would enter some fully fledged recession or something bigger, that would be worse scenarios than what we planned for. So hopefully, that provides a bit of a nuances to it. Then if I can talk about Evolve3. Yes, I realize I sounded probably a little like a marketer when I presented the products here before because it's us being very proud of the products. But I think everything I said is also factually true. These products are outstanding. I think they really are a step change for what the headset is. The feedback we're getting from our customers is very positive. We have had them in early customer trials since the beginning of this year. So some of our largest and most demanding customers have tested them with very good feedback. Also, the feedback from the largest channel partners are equally good. So if anything, I would say that the products have probably been better received than even we hoped for. So we feel very good about that. We have more work to do with Evolve3 line, as I highlighted, because we have launched the premium products now, which is about 15% of the total business. We need to make sure that the mid-tier and entry-level products are equally well received. So we're working, of course, very hard on that. Then to round it off with your questions on AI. First, I should say that I personally, and I believe that's the stance we have taken as a management team, we very much believe that AI will drive a lot of change. Will -- and also provide some challenges, but also a lot of opportunities. If I try to speak about this in parts, I would say that some business will likely become less like we're doing some business with call centers, for instance. I do think that will become less. That is though a very small part today. It's only around 5% of our enterprise business that our business we're doing towards call centers. So the absolutely majority of our enterprise business is sitting in the professionals as we call it, it's office workers of different kinds. And here, we really believe in the scenario I shared before that you need better headsets. Every new office tend to be smaller, a little bit denser. The sound volume in most offices go up, you need good headsets. And AI will likely further amplify that. There are some investors I meet that are asking questions like, yes, but what happens if you will have 20%, 30% unemployment? I can say we probably would have very big problems as a society if we will end up there. And in a very transparent way that we have not factored into the guidance for '26. And I also believe that if something that would happen, it will take some time for that to develop. So we do assume like a macro environment that is relatively stable and similar as we're now entering the year. So hopefully, that provides a bit of color on what are very good and important questions. And I should say that in addition, AI, it will help us with creating new opportunities. But like any company, we're also working a lot to see how it can help as a company to become more productive, of course. So thank you so much.

Unknown Executive

Executives
#9

Thank you for the answers to the questions raised. I would like to hear if there are other requests for the floor. This is in relation to the report from the Board. That doesn't seem to be the case. As I said in my introduction, I will proceed now to the formal adoption of everything under Item 1 to 4 on the agenda. The first item is the report from the Board. And under one, the proposal is that the AGM takes note of the report. And for the sake of good order, I'd like to ask if there are -- any comments in this respect? That doesn't seem to be the case. So I find that the AGM has taken note of the report. We'll go to the next item, which is 2, submission of the audited annual report for approval. And the Board recommends that this is what happens. The audit report will appear from Page 188 to 191 in the annual report, and it is a blank endorsement. We have approved the annual report. There have been no questions or comments. Three, the proposal is for the AGM to give discharge to the Board and executive management members. Any questions or comments? That is not the case. So I find that we have adopted the proposal from the Board. And then the last of the first 4 items, decision on the application of profit or covering of losses. The proposal is, as appears on Page 31 in the annual report that the entire amount be carried forward to next year and that no dividend be paid out for 2025. I find that this has been approved. We have now dealt with the business in items 1 to 4 on the agenda, the approval of the report, the approval of the annual report, resolution of discharge and decision on the application of profit. Then we have Item 5, presentation of an advisory vote regarding the remuneration report. The remuneration report includes remuneration and payment to the Board and management for 2025. It's been available on the company's website, and I'd like to hear if there are any questions or comments. That is not the case. I find that the remuneration report has been approved. We will now proceed to Item 6, which is approval of remuneration to the Board for 2026. Jukka Pertola has also gone over this in his presentation. The proposal is that the AGM approves maintaining the -- maintenance of the level of remuneration for 2025. There will be an adjustment that redistributes the remuneration paid to members of the committees, but will not change the overall amount. The basic remuneration will be DKK 545,000 to all members, double the fee for the Vice Chair and 3x the fee to the Chair. There will be additional amounts for additional work and the proposal is that DKK 200,000 will be paid out to members of the Audit Committee, DKK 150,000 for members of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee and DKK 150,000 for the Technology and Innovation Committee. And the Chair of each committee will get double that. Again, the total amount is unchanged from last year, but the internal distribution of the amount has been changed slightly. I find that the proposal has been adopted. That brings us to Item 7 on the agenda. It is divided into 2 parts. First, the decision concerning the number of members up for election and then of the Board. According to the 14.1 of the articles, GN Store Nord shall have a Board of Directors of at least 5 and maximum 9 members elected by the AGM elected by -- for 1 year at the time. The Board has proposed that the AGM elect 6 members for the Board. I'd like to hear if there are any comments. That is not the case. So this proposal has been duly adopted. It brings us to 7B, election of members for the Board of Directors. As it was said in the Board is proposing reelection of Jukka Pertola, Klaus Holse, Charlotte Johs, Kim Vejlby Hansen, Lise Skaarup Mortensen and Jørgen Bundgaard Hansen. As the Chairman said in his report, Helene Barnekow has said that she's now running for reelection. The competencies of other managerial positions of the individual candidates have been available to the shareholders prior to the AGM. All candidates are independent in accordance with the Danish corporate governance rules. Are there any comments? Not the case. So I conclude that Jukka Pertola, Klaus Holse, Charlotte Johs, Kim Vejlby Hansen, Lise Skaarup Mortensen and Jørgen Bundgaard Hansen have been reelected to the Board of Directors. Congratulations. Let us move on to Item 8. That's the election of the state authorized public accountant until the next AGM. The Board, following a recommendation from the Audit Committee, has proposed to elect PricewaterhouseCoopers had authorized audit partnerships as the auditor in connection with the annual report, consolidated financial statements and also to give the statutory declaration concerning the company's consolidated sustainability reporting. As mentioned in the convening notice, the Audit Committee has not been influenced by any third parties and has not had any agreement with third parties that would limit the choice. Are there any comments concerning the election of PwC as auditor, not the case. So I find that PwC has been elected as the company's auditor. That brings us to Item 9. The next item on the agenda. This is proposals from the Board of Directors concerning the acquisition of treasury shares, owned shares. As was the case last year, the Board is proposing that the AGM authorizes the Board until the next AGM to acquire treasury shares. This is a standard wording at AGMs. It says that the company's holding of own shares at no time may exceed more than 10% of the share capital and the remuneration may not deviate by more than 10% from the price listed at NASDAQ Copenhagen at the time of acquisition. Are there any comments? It's not the case. So the proposal has been duly adopted. Item 10, that is proposals from shareholders. No proposals have been received by shareholders. I move on to Item 11, and that is any other business. Under any other business, you can have the floor, but no decisions can be made. Does anyone wish to have the floor before I declare the agenda for exhausted? Not the case. So I'd like to thank you for being very good here at the AGM and the agenda has now been exhausted. I give the floor back to Jukka Pertola for a final comment.

Jukka Pertola

Executives
#10

Thank you, Mikael, for guiding us through the meeting efficiently. And thank you also, Peter, for sharing their insight into our business. And first of all, thank you for all of our shareholders for your support. It has been a challenging couple of years as we have heard, but thank you for your support anyhow. And finally, thank you for all GN employees who have worked hard and achieved good results under challenging circumstances. I hope to see you next year again when we can share more progress and value creation for GN, hopefully. So I wish you a very good day today, and thank you for coming. Thank you. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

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