Hemnet Group AB (publ) ($HEM)

Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to this 2026 Q1 release call for Hemnet Group. My name is Jonas Gustafsson, and I'm the Group CEO of Hemnet. With me here on my side today at our headquarters in Stockholm, I have our Chief Financial Officer, Anders Ornulf; and our Head of Investor Relations, Ludvig Segelmark. As usual, we will go through the presentation that was published on our website earlier this morning during today's session. I will kick it off with a summary of the main highlights during the first quarter. Thereafter, Anders Ornulf will cover the financial details before I come back in the end to wrap up today's session. As always, there will be opportunities to ask questions at the end of the presentation. Today's session will be moderated by our operator, so please follow the operator's instructions to ask questions through the provided dial-in details. So with that, let's get started, and let's move on to the next slide, please. Net sales declined by 24.7% in Q1, driven by weak listing volumes throughout the first quarter. Sales were also negatively impacted by a timing shift in revenue recognition related to the rollout in the new commercial proposition and payment model -- Sell First, Pay Later -- in which we recognize revenues first when properties are sold. 2026 financials will be impacted by Sell First, Pay Later as the new proposition has gradually been introduced, complicating year-on-year comparisons. Published listings declined by 30.7% and amounted to 28,600 listings. Paid listings amounted to 25,400 with the difference between paid and published listings being explained by some 3,200 Sell First, Pay Later listings that were published but not yet sold in the quarter. ARPL, average revenue per listing grew by 12.2% in Q1, driven by higher demand for Hemnet's value-added services paired with some price adjustments. The EBITDA margin amounted to 36.1% in Q1, down significantly from last year. The 11.8 percentage point decline is explained by lower listing volumes and revenues, which drives lower fixed cost leverage. As volumes starting to pick up again, as we've seen during April, we expect both net sales and profitability to follow accordingly. During Q1, we rolled out Sell First, Pay Later across Sweden, starting off with Stockholm on the 2nd of February, Vastra Gotaland on the 2nd of March, and the rest of Sweden by 30th of March. So far, the launch has been very successful, driving more and earlier listings to Hemnet. In addition to the successful launch, we've also seen a much stronger property market in April, which is promising for Q2 and onwards. Now let's turn to Slide 3 for a quick look at the financial performance. Net sales amounted to SEK 247.2 million, down by 24.7% compared to the same period last year, driven by the significant decline in listing volumes during the quarter and the introduction of Sell First, Pay Later. EBITDA decreased by 43.3% to SEK 89.3 million. The decrease was driven by the lower listing volumes, which show lower net sales and reduced fixed cost leverage. The EBITDA margin amounted to 36.1%. As per usual, Anders will break down these profitability dynamics in more detail as we move on in the presentation. Now let's turn to Page 4 for a look at the property market and the list volumes. On the left-hand side of this slide, you'll see a combined chart showing published listings per quarter and yearly published listings as well as the year-on-year change between quarters. Published listings decreased by almost 31% year-on-year in the first quarter. Listing volumes were negatively impacted by a weak underlying property market in the beginning of the year and the anticipation effects leading up to the east credit restrictions that went live on 1st of April. The slow market also continues to be negatively impacted by longer selling times and the average listing duration on Hemnet has increased by 21% year-on-year to 57 days compared to 47 days in the same period last year. However, we see clear indications of a market rebound during April. In the first week of April, we experienced the largest week-on-week increase in new published listings that we've seen over the last decade, thanks to a combination of the nationwide rollout of Sell First, Pay Later. And secondly, there is credit restrictions coming live. And thirdly, some calendar effect related to Easter. After the initial week, we've seen continued strong market in April compared to the last couple of months. Let's look a bit at the volume development in the first week of April on the next slide. So let's turn to next slide, please. As I just pointed out, we clearly saw that anticipation effects ahead of eased credit restrictions and the Sell First, Pay Later negatively impacting the listing volumes in March. However, starting in April, we've seen a clear momentum shift with a much higher new listing activity trend compared to the previous month. New published listings in the last 4 weeks grew by 34% compared to the previous 4-week period. That is roughly 25 percentage points higher compared to what we've seen during the same period in the last 3 years -- and the last 3 years being 2023, 2024, and 2025. When comparing the last 4 weeks with the same average period the last 3 years, 2026 is around 7% to 8% below the average volumes. However, compared to 2025, which had a very strong April, volumes are down approximately 14%. Stockholm continues to stand out with a particularly strong market development, leading the market recovery in April with higher volumes, lower lead times, and accelerating price levels. With that, let's move on to the next slide on Slide 6, please. ARPL grew by 12.2% in the first quarter. The ARPL growth was again driven by a strong demand for our value-added services paired with slight price adjustments in January. The conversion rate to higher tier packages continued to increase during the first quarter. The successful rollout of Sell First, Pay Later had a small positive effect on ARPL growth in the quarter and will continue to be a growth driver going forward, driving further increased uptake in value-added services like Hemnet Premium and Hemnet Max. Now let's move to Slide 7 and focus a bit on our different strategic focus areas for Q1, starting with marketing. In mid-March, we launched our new brand campaign, More Eyes on Your Listing. The campaign went live nationwide, but with a clear focus on the metropolitan areas in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmo to meet market demands in these high-growth regions. The campaign highlights Hemnet's superior audience and the importance of using the marketplace with the largest audience if you want to increase the probability of a successful sale and the best possible price. As we've stated previously, Hemnet will continue to invest in marketing and sales in 2026 to further highlight the strength of Hemnet's offering and reaffirm our strong market position. Now let's turn to Slide 8 to look a bit more into the value Hemnet delivers to customers through our platform. In mid-March, we published data quantifying the financial effect a Hemnet listing can potentially have on our property transactions. Data show Hemnet that properties in Stockholm inner city advertised on Hemnet during the first 2 weeks of March, on average, saw a 5.1 percentage point higher bidding premium compared to properties not listed on Hemnet. For an average Stockholm property price of SEK 6 million as an example, this in theory would translate to approximately SEK 300,000 more in final price relative to the asking price. Stockholm inner city often serves as a bellwether for the rest of the country and has seen particularly strong activity and price trends in the last month. The data highlights the importance of choosing the correct sales strategy in this kind of market environment, where visibility is key to maximizing the chances of a successful outcome and bidding dynamics. Now let's move to Slide 9, please. In March this year, Orvesto published their full year 2025 reach numbers for the largest commercial website in Sweden. Reach is essentially a metric that show how many actual people that engage with a website like Hemnet on a weekly basis. The numbers from 2025 shows that Hemnet continues to have a stable market reach of about 1.8 million people on a weekly basis despite the slow property market that we experienced. The reach is particularly strong in metropolitan areas like Stockholm, where an even larger share of the population uses Hemnet on a regular basis. Now let's move on to the next slide, please. During Q1, Sell First, Pay Later was rolled out across the country with the final phase taking place on the 30th of March. The launch of the new model where sellers can choose to pay for the listing when or if the property is sold has been very well received among both sellers and agents. We see both more listings and earlier listings coming to Hemnet, which is fully in line with our strategic ambition. The model has effectively lowered the barriers to list on Hemnet while also stimulating market activity. When comparing geographies where the model was rolled out compared to other geographies, we saw that growth of new listings in SFPL counties outperformed the rest of Sweden by roughly 15 percentage points year-on-year in February and March, whilst also driving a higher conversion to value-added services. Sell First, Pay Later conversion has so far ranged between 35% to 45% of all listings in geographies where it's been made available. The conversion has fluctuated between weeks and geographies, and we're quite pleased and satisfied with the adoption rates that we are seeing. The sell-through rate for February cohort in Stockholm was 45%, meaning that 45% of all Sell First, Pay Later listings published in February were sold either in February or in March. With that, let's move on to Slide 11, please. In addition to Sell First, Pay Later, we also started rolling out our strategic partnership with Swedish real estate agents on an HQ and brand owner level. The partnerships are still in its early phase, but so far, we've seen a strong demand from many of the leading agencies across Sweden to sign up and commit to integrating Hemnet across the full sales journey. To date, we've signed almost 90 strategic partnerships covering some half of the top 30 agents in Sweden. Since our last update, we have added a number of the largest real estate agent brands in Sweden, including names like MOHV, Courtier Group, and Properties & Partners. We also continue to have positive discussions with several of the biggest brands in Sweden. One exciting feature that will be included in the strategic partnerships is what we call under-the-radar listings or underhand in Swedish. Under-the-radar will be an opportunity to highlight listings on Hemnet in a very early stage, whilst the agent and seller will still be able to maintain full control of the sales process by publishing behind a log-in on their agent website. In the first iteration, the properties will be visible on the listing pages of the agents and not be searchable or viewable in the result list. Hemnet will then continue to co-develop the feature together with our partners to launch the next iteration during the summer. Now let's move on to the next slide, please. In Q1, Hemnet has continued to use AI to enhance product innovation and operational efficiency. During the past months, Hemnet has, as the first Swedish property platform, launched a ChatGPT integration where users are given new tools in how to search for properties. The app delivers relevant listings directly in the chat and seamlessly guides the user to Hemnet to view the full listing, book a viewing or contact an agent. This week, we're also rolling out our reimagination feature, which will enable our users to visualize what a property can look like in another style or without furniture. We're quite excited about this new feature and think this is something that our users will truly appreciate. We're also continuing with our conversational search data, which we talked about during the Q4 presentation in January. As the next step, we're scaling up the features to around 30% of our web users and enhancing the user experience significantly by more advanced tagging of properties. In addition to the consumer-facing product launches that we are able to do with the help of AI, we are seeing quite significant results on the operational side. Today, more than 50% of our code is written by using AI copilots. That 50% was roughly 20% in December, and we expect to continue to see a growth and development in this area. Our internal surveys show that current engineers are reporting large efficiency gains, and we are able to deliver a lot more product news today compared to just a year ago. We're still in the early days of this development, and we are very excited about the rate of change we're currently seeing and what possibilities that this will open up for us going forward. So now let's move Slide #13 to wrap this up. In the business update we provided in connection with the Q4 report presentation, we highlighted 4 strategic focus areas for Hemnet in the first quarter, and I wanted to take this opportunity to briefly touch upon these topics. In Q1, we successfully rolled out both Sell First, Pay Later and the strategic partnerships. It is still early, but we're seeing strong initial results and that both these initiatives are driving a changed user behavior among both sellers and agents with more listings coming to Hemnet in an earlier phase. In addition to these 2 strategic launches, we've continued to leverage AI to further enhance the user experience on our platform. We are rolling out new AI-enabled features at a high rate, and we're able to do so in part, thanks to the productivity benefits we're seeing across the organization. This development is further underpinned by a continued strong focus on sales and marketing with the rollout of our new brand campaign during the quarter. All in all, we continue to deliver on our strategic focus areas in the first quarter, while we look ahead and plan to launch much more additional initiatives to further accelerate customer and partner value creation. With that, I will hand over to Anders for the financial update, starting with Page 4. Anders, over to you.

Thank you, Jonas. Let's turn to Page 15 and the financial summary. As Jonas mentioned earlier, we are navigating a challenging market environment with the volume of new published listings fell by 31% during the quarter. That development, in combination with the revenue recognition effects following the launch of Sell First, Pay Later, resulted in a net sales decline of 25% to SEK 247 million. Paid listings declined by 38%, with the difference between paid versus published listings being SFPL listings not yet sold by the end of the quarter. On a positive note, we continue to see very strong underlying performance in our paid ARPL, growing 12%, once again proving the sustained and increasing demand for our value-added services. Another noteworthy point is average listing time, which on a rolling 12-month basis increased from 47 days in Q1 '25 to 55 days in Q4 '25, and now 57 days in Q1 2026. The year-on-year effect of the longer listing time is negative SEK 7 million in revenue and the sequential effect of the 2 additional days from Q4 to Q1 is negatively minus SEK 3 million. The development of listing duration is important even at a time when parts of the revenue are recognized in full upon invoicing. Listings sold as pay now and the pay when listing is removed are recognized over the advertising period. And remember that in Q1, we have a gradual rollout of SFPL and the number of sold SFPL listings in paid listings are therefore quite limited. EBITDA for the quarter amounted to SEK 89.3 million, corresponding to a margin of 36.1%. The margin contraction is primarily explained by the lower net sales as we maintain a large portion of fixed costs that cannot be fully adjusted in the short term to compensate for the drop in listings. One important component in the EBITDA margin is the compensation to real estate agents. When expressed as a percentage of property seller revenue, this ratio increases year-on-year from 29.7% to 30.5% in Q1 2026, driven by further improvement in both recommendation rates and actual conversion, higher commission reflecting a substantially stronger underlying improvement of our value-added products. I will walk you through the specific cost dynamics in more detail on the following slides. The increase in leverage to 0.9 is primarily an effect of our active capital allocation combined with the low listing volumes during the period. Notably, during the previous year, we expanded our share buyback program from 450 to 600, following the mandate approved at the AGM last year. We ended the quarter with a headcount of 179, representing a strategic increase of 23 employees compared to the same period last year. This growth was primarily driven by reinforcements within product and tech, as well as new resources within the sales team to enhance engagement with the agent community. Additionally, we strengthened our marketing capabilities with a particular focus on CRM. With that overview, let's turn to Page 16, to our revenues by segment, to take a closer look at the Q1 figures. Our largest segment, Property sellers, which we have previously covered, generated revenue of SEK 198 million. Revenue from real estate agents decreased by 7% to SEK 23.5 million. While this was impacted by the weak market volumes, it was partially offset by continued growth in our sold by us product. Revenue from property developers increased by 10% to SEK 12 million. This is a strong performance driven by the new annual subscription packages launched in January 2026. Revenue from other advertisers also increased by 5% to SEK 14 million, demonstrating the ability to improve performance with price. The B2B segment is performing well despite the fact that the lower volume of listings reduces the number of impressions, which, of course, negatively impacted display sales across the B2B division. Continued optimization and focus on Hemnet's unique products are making a significant difference, keeping the revenue on par year-over-year. Turning to Page 17 and our EBITDA bridge. We can clearly see the dynamics at play this quarter. We start with an EBITDA of SEK 157 million from the first quarter of last year. Primary impact and by far, the largest comes, of course, from net sales, which had a negative effect of SEK 81 million due to the lower listings. Compensation to agents decreased in line with the decline in revenue from property sellers, resulting in a positive impact of close to SEK 23 million. Other external expenses increased by a little bit more than SEK 7 million, largely due to a higher overall marketing spend and the strategic front-loading of a major national brand campaign Jonas mentioned earlier. This was aimed at capturing earlier traffic and listings leading up to and alongside the launch of Sell First, Pay Later. Personnel costs decreased slightly year-on-year, primarily due to cost items related to organizational changes in Q1 2025. Excluding these cost items, personnel costs increased by 5.4%, driven by salary inflation and higher number of employees, which better reflects the underlying personnel cost development. Finally, other items had a marginal negative impact of SEK 2.4 million related to lower capitalized development expenditure for our own staff in a year-over-year context. In total, this results in EBITDA for the quarter of SEK 89 million mentioned earlier. Finally, let's move to Page 18 for an update on our cash flow and financial position. Our rolling 12-month free cash flow amounted to SEK 690 million. Although the lower EBITDA level is reflected in the cash flow, we maintained a very strong cash conversion rate of 99%, underscoring the quality of our business model. Our stable cash generation and strong balance sheet allow us to continue returning capital to shareholders. As shown in the middle chart, we repurchased shares for SEK 155 million during the first quarter, totaling just over 1.2 million shares of the 1.2 million. A small portion of 43,000 were repurchased on a separate mandate in order to enable delivery of shares to the participants in the performance share programs. With our current valuation, the share buyback program remains a very attractive tool for capital allocation, allowing us to deliver significant value back to our shareholders together with the dividend, of course. On the right, you can see the net debt and leverage ratio. Net debt amounted to SEK 613 million, corresponding to a leverage of 0.09. While this represents an increase from previous quarters, we remain well below our long-term financial target of below 2x, ensuring that we retain a high degree of financial flexibility. With that, I will hand over the call back to Jonas to summarize the quarter.

Thank you, Anders. Let's move on to the summary slide and Slide #20, please. So to summarize the first quarter, new published listings in Q1 remained suppressed, but April signaled a clear market pivot, putting us in a much better position going forward. Paid ARPL grew by 12.2% in Q1, driven by a continued high demand for Hemnet's value-added services and SFPL is expected to help to drive this going forward as well. A very successful launch of Sell First, Pay Later in Q1, we're already seeing how the new model effectively lowers the barriers to list on Hemnet while stimulating overall market activity. All in all, we continue to deliver on our strategic focus areas in the first quarter, while we look ahead and plan to launch additional initiatives to further accelerate customer and partner value creation. With that, let's open up for Q&A, please.

Welcome to Hemnet's Q1 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers. [Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Eirik Rafdal from DNB Carnegie.

So if we start on the ARPL growth of 12.2%, that's a bit of a step-up from the 11.1% you reported for January, February. What's the reason for the acceleration in March? And also, I think, Jonas, you mentioned that SFPL, but are you able to split kind of the effect from more VAS and SFPL? That's my first question.

I think, Anders, you're better suited to cover the questions from Eirik.

It's a step-up, but it's not that big. So of course, gradually rolling out SFPL will in theory also with the SFPL listing being a little bit more expensive will have an impact on ARPL. But it's a step-up that we like, but it's not huge. So an effect of more and more listings -- SFPL listings out there, I would say, is a major explanation around that.

Perfect. And that kind of trickles into my next question because Jonas again, I think you said 35% to 45% adoption rate already on SFPL. Just for our understanding, the people that aren't opting for this, why are they not opting for it? Maybe it's just a personal preference, but kind of in my book, you're paying quite low insurance premium. And do you also see any counties asking prices, property types, age brackets, et cetera, that have kind of a significantly higher or lower uptake of SFPL?

So on the first question and your personal reflection, I think my personal reflection going into this was very much in line with that. I think that if you take one step back, Eirik, Hemnet has had a sort of a paid listing opportunity out there since 2013. So that's a quite long period of time. If you take a step back in those 35% to 45% after the first initial months, I think that's a very strong adoption. And I think over time, as both real estate agents, but also sellers become even more aware about this strong product, I think there's a chance that we can see higher levels. But it takes time, right? And it's 7,500 different agents out in Sweden, and it's essentially 7,500 different type of sales strategies. I think one thing that is important, Eirik, is and we've spoken about this in the past, there is a dynamic related to whether you buy first or whether you sell first. In cases where you buy first your -- sort of your new property and you need to sell your existing one, that's typically a period of time where you are stressed and you're to 100% a committed seller, meaning that you know that you need to sell and you know that you're going to sell. For them, the sort of the standard opportunity still remains a highly attractive option. So I think that's a category of consumers that will have a continued preference for our standard listing. So I think that's a very sort of strong stereotype. Then also, I think what we hear from some of the agents is that they want to have committed sellers, right? Because at the end of the day, agents, they make their margins and they make their provisions based on the fact that the property is selling. And if you paid for Hemnet upfront, that also could indicate that the seller would be a bit more sort of leaning into the sales process. In terms of specific areas or specific segment, I think the adoption is so high, 35% to 45%, that it's difficult to draw out any specific areas or specific regions where this Sell First, Pay Later would be much stronger. At least that's not what we've seen in the initial data. So I think that's difficult to draw conclusions. But I think as we also indicated and as I mentioned as part of my presentation, we've seen a slightly higher BOSS penetration for the Sell First, Pay Later. So that's a difference that we do see. But hopefully, that covers it.

Just kind of final one for me on SFPL. The 45% sell-through rate in kind of month T plus 2, how does that compare to historical averages in Stockholm? And also how does it kind of compare to the same duration now but on pay now pay later?

Eirik, so a little bit too early to draw any definite conclusions, but we've seen the sell-through rate, as you said, on 45% in Stockholm for the February cohort. We should, however, keep in mind that the turnover in Stockholm is a bit higher than other parts of Sweden. So it's not -- that is not entirely representative. Now coming back to your question maybe is that -- we know that the average duration time is 67%. And we said in the Q4 launch that within 24 months, the sell-through rate is 82% to 92%. So in our world, it's pretty much expected, but I also want to say that it's too early to draw any conclusion. But a good start when comes to sell-through. It's very early on.

Perfect. And just I'll sneak in one final one, and that's on kind of traffic sourcing and any updates there kind of from LLMs pre and post integration of ChatGPT? Are you seeing any meaningful step-up in your traffic from GPT in particular or just LLMs in more general?

I'll take that one, Eirik. So I think as part of the business update that we had in connection with Q4, we indicated that the LLM traffic was below 0.1%. It is increasing, but it's increasing from a very small level and not with an exponential pace either. So traffic remains very low from the LLMs. When it comes to this new app, I think given the fact that traffic is low, this is a way for us to experiment and to learn and to be sort of in the forefront of what's happening in terms of consumer shift. But again, levels are very, very low and tiny.

The next question comes from Georg Attling from Pareto Securities.

I only have 2. So the first one is the time to Hemnet improvement that you mentioned. Could you quantify that, how that has improved?

So it's looking at the listings that we're seeing, what we're seeing is that right now, as part of the SFPL rollout, we've also had a great period, meaning that we've allowed both agents and sellers to also use or list earlier -- or sorry, listings that are older than the 2 days. So it's a bit too early to draw any sort of conclusions and come with a specific number, but we're definitely seeing a trend that we get earlier listings, but we can't really quantify it at this point in time. But when we sort of move over the first period where we have had this great period, I think we would be able to come back.

Second question, looking at the listings coming to market as a whole, it appears like you still have some leakage in the listings here in here in April, even though the market is recovering somewhat. What more tools do you have at your disposal to sort of stop that leakage?

I think there's a lot of seasonality in the numbers now and especially in April. What we see is that we've seen a strong market recovery and a rebound. In terms of more areas and more things, I mean, we're continuously looking at various alternatives to drive more and earlier listings at Hemnet. We've just rolled out Sell First, Pay Later, and we're happy with the initial results, but there's definitely more to come, but we would revert back to those specific things that we are doing, but we're not sitting still.

The next question comes from Andrew Ross from Barclays.

I've got two, if that's okay. First one is just to come back to the Sell First, Pay Later attach rate. In the March update, you spoke about around 50% of property sellers choosing Sell First, Pay Later in Stockholm. And I think they're now talking about 35% to 40% of all listings in geographies where it's been made available. So could you just square the circle about how those numbers compare with the kind of Sell First, Pay Later attach in Stockholm is still going up and how to kind of think about those? That's the first question.

Andrew, so as you pointed out, in the February revenue report, we said that roughly 50%. And what stated in the February revenue report was that 50% of eligible listings choose SFPL. But if you look at who's eligible to getting a SFPL listing, that is obviously changing given the fact that we've had this grace period. So given the fact that we had the grace period upfront, we also expected that to come down a bit, and that's what we've seen. The 35% to 45% penetration is related to total listing. So there's one explanation given the fact that the first 50% was in relation to eligible listings, whilst the 35% to 45% is related to total listing. And then you also have the grace period adding some complexity over the first month given our launch offer.

Second one is about OpEx growth. So it grew around 11% year-on-year in Q1. How are you thinking about OpEx growth for the rest of the year?

I'll have Anders -- you want to take that one, please?

Sure. If you look at OpEx -- if you look at fixed OpEx, if you take away the variable cost, it actually grew 7%, which is lower than the last year's 40%. And for us, it makes sense given the commitment to continue to invest in product, marketing and sales, referring to Jonas's business update earlier. But we're also comparing ourselves to a year 2025 that was also characterized by quite high activity. So these are the figures I have with me, so to say. The fixed OpEx growth is 40% in 2025, 7% in Q1. And even though quarterly comparisons can be a bit volatile, that is run rate that at least give you some guidance, even though it's not a full guidance for 2025.

Okay. So that year-on-year growth in OpEx for Q1 is a sensible ballpark to be thinking about for the rest of the year roughly?

You should also take the last year's 40% review as a reference. So somewhere there.

Somewhere between 7% and 14%. That's helpful.

The next question comes from Giles Thorne from Jefferies.

The first question was for Jonas, and it was on Hemnet Max, which is quite noticeable by its absence from many of the prepared materials today. So it's a very high-level question, but does the Hemnet Max need to be reconstructed to reflect that we are now in an era where premarket is a much larger feature of the overall housing market? The second question, it was a follow-up on the premarket or the upcoming listings question that was asked earlier. From a different angle, the strategic partnership agreements appear to now be reaching critical mass, but we're still not really seeing any sequential uptick in your upcoming listings on site. So perhaps you could give a bit more color around why that is and why we shouldn't be expecting it yet? Then the final question was for Anders. It was in October last year that I asked you, Anders, whether you would be willing to increase the cadence or the quantum of the buyback in response to some of the pressure you were getting from GCQ, and you were very clear at the time that you wouldn't be changing. But of course, the share price is now half what it was back in October. So the latest thinking here from you, Anders, on how you can use your balance sheet to optimize cost of capital would be great.

So I'll take the first two ones. On the first one, when it comes to Hemnet Max, so what we've seen over the last months, and we've done some feature changes is an increasing adoption to Hemnet Max. It's been higher in Q1, and we've seen that continue in the early parts of Q2. If we take one step back, I think Hemnet Max penetration is still at low levels. And I think from just an overall perspective, there's essentially two dimensions for us to work on. And it is, first of all, it's the relative price difference between Hemnet Max and Hemnet Premium, and that's something that we have been elaborating on and closing that gap, and that's driving a slight increase of adoption. When it comes to -- the second dimension, it is essentially related to the relative feature difference between Hemnet Max and especially Hemnet Premium. And with the introduction of some additional opportunities to get Raketen or this rocket feature that we do have, that's one thing that we introduced, and we've seen that helping and supporting. But as for all products and especially Max, given where we are and given the fact that it's just a 1-year old feature, something that we continuously work on. Number two, related to the premarket, it's per your point, more and more agents are joining us in the strategic partnerships. I think also what I mentioned as part of the as part of the presentation, we're very excited that we will be able to launch this below the radar feature coming up pretty soon. And we have reasons to believe that, that definitely would help us to get a larger share and a larger part of the premarket. One thing to keep in mind is obviously what we've seen in Stockholm, where the sales cycles have come down quite significantly. And in inner city Stockholm in March, we saw that the sales cycles were back sort of at 2022 levels, coming down significantly from the period of '23, '24, and '25. That is also reducing the importance of the premarket. So also the fact that we see earlier listings coming to Hemnet as we spoke about also upon Georg's question. The third question, Anders, I will hand over to you.

Of course. And as I also said in October, this is a question that we discussed with the Board from time to time. And our buyback program is very powerful. And at today's valuation, it becomes highly attractive. But of course, we have to make sure to balance this with the earnings and the cash flow, so it remains sustainable over time, just as we've done since the IPO in 2021. And right now, we are dealing with a onetime impact from the introduction of SFPL. I knew that in October, but you didn't, combined with a soft market for new listings, which, of course, act as a headwind. But going forward, in the notice to the AGM at the end of next week, you see a proposal to renew the mandate. We will first await the shareholders' decisions and then subsequently the Board's decision on the execution. However, Hemnet has historically been characterized by continuity when it comes to returning excess cash. So that is the order for that.

That's all very clear. And as a follow-up, please, you're still only at 0 -- so I appreciate your point on visibility into the accounting impact and the cash flow impact of SFPL, but you're still less than half of the way towards your overall leverage target. So there's plenty of room to be much more aggressive. Is that something you recognize and would be willing to accommodate into your thinking?

This is, of course, the financial target is a very important one that we are one of the many dimensions that we discuss. But of course, we want to have sustainable decisions around that. So we might do something at a onetime deal. But for the time being, we only live with the mandate we have and the program we have, and we're satisfied with that. But of course, we discuss it with many dimensions.

The next question comes from Will Packer from BNP Paribas.

I had a few around the competitive backdrop. So I'll just list them and it would be great if you could go through them in turn. So firstly, when I look at Sensor Tower, the daily active user lead of Hemnet versus Booli has shrunk precipitously from, let's say, 5x in 2023 to sub 1.5x today. If we look at time spent, it's now roughly equal. Would you characterize that as a fair overview of market dynamics? Or is there distortions such as app versus desktop mix, different levels of genuine in-market buyers on the apps? Just to help us understand how you see the traffic competitive backdrop. Secondly, a big area of focus of shifting to the Sell First, Pay Later was to erode the inventory advantage of peers like Booli and Boneo. Could you update us from the data you see on April, how that inventory advantage is developing? Are you curtailing the inventory advantage with the new product offering? Then finally, you've talked in the past about potential regulatory scrutiny on Booli and their funding in the context of sort of quasi government funding against the private enterprise. Could you update us as to where that stands and whether there's been any progress on that front?

I will take them one by one, and I think I'll ask Ludvig for some comments on the first one. I think the overall reflection when it comes to third-party data in terms of traffic is challenging. I mean, the Sense Tower and also other sources, we've seen those sources deviate quite a lot compared to what I see in our internal numbers. So it's a bit difficult to draw conclusions just based on the quality there. But Ludvig, I'm not sure whether you have any specific reflections on the Sense Tower.

No, but I will, I think as Jonas correctly points out, the third-party sources tend to be quite problematic. I don't want to highlight any specific sources here. But I think we gave some active user numbers in connection with the Q4 report. You can see it's very stable. If you look at some of these external sources, neither the absolute numbers nor the trends make any sense compared to what we are seeing on our side. So therefore, we tend to not use them because historically, they've been very inaccurate when it comes to -- when we compare it to our own data. So therefore, it's difficult for us to comment on what they're showing because historically, it's not been a reliable picture.

Thanks, Ludvig. On the Sell First, Pay Later, in terms of the rollout that we did across the full country by the 30th of March, I think what we've seen is a pickup in terms of how large share of new listings and how large share of the total market that we capture. But I think this is also -- I mean, it's a timing aspect of it, right? If you take one step back in our strategic ambition with Sell First, Pay Later, what we've communicated is to get more listings and earlier listings to Hemnet, drawing full conclusions given the fact that we're still in the grace period and the grace period will end on Thursday for the rest of the country. It's difficult to come with any specific numbers, but we're definitely seeing the trends moving in the right direction. Thirdly -- Will, can you just take the third question again, please?

Well, you talked previously about sort of potential regulatory scrutiny on funding. It's loss-making, it's got government support quite government support. Just any developments there?

Yes. So in terms of the -- your point, so it's absolutely correct that we turned to SCA or the Swedish Competition Authority regarding SBAB and the subsidiary Booli. There's an ongoing process with SCA. And I think it's fair to say that they're doing a very diligent job looking into this matter in quite some detail. So SCA, we've been in contact with them a number of times, having a dialogue, and they've also done a reach out to the market, essentially meaning competitors to Hemnet like Boneo and others, the new entrant of Ingolstadt has been asked, and they've also done a reach out to the larger agency firms. So we hope to get clarity around this in the near future, but time line is a bit unclear also past. But it's -- I think one important takeaway and communication is that they're looking into this in quite some detail.

The next question comes from Yulia Kazakovtseva from UBS.

You actually answered pretty much all of them. So I only have one. You mentioned about how you use AI on your OpEx side as well. If possible, could you please quantify the level of savings you can extract from AI usage in Q1? And also in your commentary about OpEx progression for the rest of the year, do you think that there could be potentially more savings to come from AI development? Or it's already within these numbers, which you talked about?

Yulia, a bit of a difficult question. So let me elaborate a bit. I think in terms of the AI that we're seeing and the results in terms of operational efficiency, what we are doing right now is that instead of trying to reduce OpEx, we're trying to produce more. We think that pace on innovation and launching more products is the right strategic priority and the right area. With that said, we will become even more efficient driven by AI. I mentioned 50% adoption in Q1. And that was roughly 20% during Q4. So I think there is definitely more room for improvement. over time, I think this could -- if you decide to go down that route, this could also come with cost reductions. But right now, our priority is to get more products out, innovate more and strengthen our proposition towards sellers, buyers, and agents. Anders, do you want to add anything there?

No.

The next question comes from Eirik Rafdal from DNB Carnegie.

Back on line. Just one final question for me, and it's on the Orvesto reach numbers. Do you have any more granular understanding of what those numbers look like underneath the hood? I'm thinking urban versus rural areas, younger versus older parts of the population, et cetera, and kind of how that's evolved over the last 2 to 3 years on those types of underlying KPIs.

So not having all the nitty-gritty details ahead of me right now. But I think just some of the main takeaways is that I know that we're especially strong in the metropolitan areas. And I think we also mentioned that the Stockholm area is an area where we see a specific strength. Number two is that if we look at the sort of the -- I shouldn't say average, but the most stereotype user of Hemnet, we tend to be a bit overrepresented for females in the age between 30 and 40. But I think if you like, we can come back to that at a different point in time. But those are some of the main takeaways I remember from that piece of analysis.

Yes, that's great. I think it would be good to have an understanding of how that's evolved over time because I think that's also an investor concern around how potential preferences are shifting kind of within the larger number.

Sure. But I think -- and then one important takeaway that's also what we mentioned is that despite the sort of the lower listing activity that we saw during 2025, the reach numbers remain very stable, which I think is something that is important to bring with you. But let's get back to that, Eirik.

The next question comes from Andrew Ross from Barclays.

I just wanted to double-click a bit on the under-the-radar listings. I'm hoping you can give us a bit more color as to how meaningful you think those could be as part of your overall listing volumes and differentiating the Hemnet platform versus Booli. And I guess a follow-up to that, I appreciate there's a lot of scenarios in terms of how your presale content may play out over the next few months. But what is your thinking potentially on taking unmonetized pre-listings in presale market on your platform if that gap versus Booli continues?

I mean, we're in very early stage. And given the fact that this is a part of the strategic partnerships, this is something that is jointly evolving based on our discussions and especially the preferences that we do see. It's all about creating a win-win in these partnerships. We think that we can bring clear value to our partners by ensuring that they could have a controlled start-up process. And we think that getting the listings earlier to Hemnet, that has an important strategic vision from our perspective. As I said, it's still early days, and we are elaborating and testing. And if this turns out to be successful, that might be one of something that we want to scale up in addition. Is that okay, Andrew?

That's helpful. I mean, I guess as a follow-up on the idea of maybe having free listings over time. Is that something that you would consider?

We're looking at all various options and alternatives. I think this is a very controlled way of ensuring that we get more listings. But we're looking at all various alternatives that could be attractive for Hemnet, but that's nothing that is decided at this point.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

With that, a big thank you to everyone for joining the call today and for all the great questions that we had in the back end as part of the Q&A. That is all from us, and this will conclude today's session. Have a great day, everyone.