Pandora A/S (PNDORA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome everyone to Pandora's Annual General Meeting 2026. My name is Peter Ruzicka, and I have been Chair of Pandora since 1st of January 2020. As a reminder to today's Annual General Meeting, it will be conducted in English, and that is in accordance with our Article of Association. As a service to our shareholders, simultaneous interpretation between English and Danish will be available during the meeting. I would like to draw the attention to the disclaimer on the screen. The key point is that the presentation may include forward-looking statements, which are inherently subject to uncertainty. Before I introduce today's speakers and we move on to today's agenda, I would like to take a moment to sincerely thank Alexander Lacik for his outstanding contributions as CEO of Pandora. As some of you may remember, Alexander last year announced that he would be retiring as CEO of Pandora. And in that context, we also announced Berta De Pablos-Barbier as new CEO of Pandora, who assumed responsibility since 1st of January 2026. Under Alexander's leadership, Pandora successfully navigated a period of significant transformation, strengthened its global brand and delivered strong results for our shareholders. On behalf of the Board, I would like to express our deep appreciation for Alexander's dedication, his strategic vision and tireless efforts over the past years. So now I would like to introduce today's speakers. Joining me are our Chief Executive Officer, Berta De Pablos-Barbier; and our Chief Financial Officer, Anders Boyer. Together, Berta and Anders, they make up Pandora's executive management. 2025 has been a turbulent year for Pandora, marked by a challenging consumer environment. As I mentioned, Berta was recently appointed as Chief Executive Officer and has already shared an initial strategic update as part of the Q4 and full year announcement earlier this year. Berta and Anders will provide further details on the business development later today. For now, I would like to thank them both for their strong contribution and efforts in 2025. In accordance with our Articles of Association, the Board appoints the Chair of the Annual General Meeting. And the Board has appointed Pernille Dalhoff from Kromann Reumert to serve in this role also this year. So with that, I will now hand over to Pernille, who will guide us through today's agenda and ensure that all formal requirements are met. So Pernille, please.

Thank you, Peter, and thank you to the Board for appointing me as Chair of Pandora's Annual General Meeting. I look forward to a good meeting today. Before we would begin, I would like to inform you that this Annual General Meeting is being live streamed via Pandora's shareholder portal. So that means that any shareholders who ask questions will be shown online and a recording of the meeting will be available on Pandora's website after the meeting. As Peter mentioned, my first task as Chair of this meeting is to check that this meeting has been properly convened. And according to the Articles of Association, meeting shall be convened giving not less than 3 and not more than 5 weeks' notice by advertisement on Pandora's website and e-mails sent to all registered shareholders having so requested. And Pandora has informed me that on February 6, notice was indeed sent by e-mail to the registered shareholders having so requested, was announced in a company announcement and was also published on Pandora's website. Furthermore, the complete proposals for consideration today, including the proposed new Articles of Association, Pandora's annual report for '25, the remuneration report for '25 and forms for notification of attendance and proxy and postal votes have also been available on the website since February 6. On this basis, I conclude that all requirements under Pandora's Articles of Association and applicable legislation have been complied with, and this Annual General Meeting has been properly convened and is competent for the transaction of the business on the agenda. Any comments or questions to this formal part? Then I conclude that this Ordinary General Meeting 2026 is properly and lawfully convened and competent for the transaction on the business on the agenda today. And I can inform you that of the 79 million shares, a total of 51.6 million is represented here today, equal to approximately 69% of the share capital and votes. If you would please take a look at the agenda for today's meeting, item 2 and items 4 through 8 may be passed by a simple majority of votes. And item 3 regarding the remuneration report is subject to an advisory vote only. Item 9 includes 4 proposals by the Board. Item 9.1 regarding reduction of the share capital by cancellation of treasury shares and Item 9.3 regarding amendment of Article 7.3 of the articles require the affirmative vote of at least 2/3 of the votes cast and of the share capital represented here at today's meeting. Item 9.2 regarding authorization to the Board to increase the share capital with preemptive rights for the shareholders and Item 9.4 regarding authorization to me as Chair of this meeting to register the resolutions made here today, may be passed by a simple majority of votes. Items 1 and 2 on the agenda regarding the Board's report on the company's activities for '25 and the approval of the audited annual report for '25 will be dealt with jointly like we normally do here in Pandora, and the remaining items will be addressed one by one. And before I give the word to Peter to present the Board's report on the company's activities during 2025, a short review video will be shown. [Presentation]

Before I go into the strengths of the business, I want to address something that is clearly on many shareholders' minds, the value development of the company during 2025. Pandora has been on a long-term growth journey, but we ended 2025 below our own expectations. Together with external headwinds, including higher silver prices, foreign exchange movements and tariffs, this impacted market sentiment and contributed to a material decline in our share price over the year. The Board takes that development seriously. At the same time, we remain confident in Pandora's long-term opportunities and by the fundamentals of the business. Our scale, brand strength and resilient business model. With that context, let me briefly highlight where Pandora stands today. In 2025, Pandora is the world's largest jewellery brand with revenues of DKK 32.5 billion and more than 112 million pieces sold globally. We are a brand with broad appeal, serving women across generations and markets worldwide. Our crafting operations in Thailand remain a key strategic asset. They represent the largest branded jewellery crafting facility in the world and are industry-leading in terms of scale, craftsmanship, efficiency and skill level. At the same time, we continue to set high standards for employee well-being and environmental responsibility. We are also progressing well with our plans to establish a new crafting facility in Vietnam planned to open in the second half of 2026, and that will further strengthen our long-term capacity and resilience. Pandora's global store network is extensive and profitable with more than 7,000 points of sale across over 100 countries and is fully complemented by a strong online presence. In 2025, we recorded more than 915 million visits across our physical and online stores. Together, this gives us a truly global mass distribution across both physical and digital channels. Sustainability remains a core pillar of Pandora's strategy and value proposition. We are committed to being a low-carbon business, advancing circular innovation and fostering an inclusive, diverse and fair culture. In 2025, we continue to make solid progress, including sourcing 100% recycled silver and gold and further strengthening diversity in leadership. Furthermore, in 2025, we achieved an EBIT margin of 23.9%, an organic growth of 6%. Based on our financial performance, we ask shareholders today to approve a dividend of DKK 22 per share. We will come back to that later, of course. All in all, this provides a strong platform for Pandora to capture growth, opportunities and create value in the years ahead. And as a part of her update, Berta will also explain how we are addressing the commodity and cost headwinds. Further, I want to comment on the remuneration report, which is presented for an advisory note. We note the feedback received from shareholders leading to the remuneration report 2025 not being approved. The Board and the Remuneration Committee have carefully considered the input from shareholders. A few comments about the CFO award for which detailed KPI targets are not disclosed in the report. Firstly, the award is indeed tied up to value-creating KPIs, but for business sensitivity and confidentiality reasons, we cannot share all the details around the KPIs. However, we can assure you that we do what we believe is best for Pandora and our shareholders. Before I give the word to Berta, I would finally like to comment on the Board evaluation. I can confirm that the Board conducted an evaluation of its performance and its collaboration with Executive Management during 2025. The conclusion and key observations were presented to both the Board and executive management and formed the basis for a thorough and constructive discussion. The outcome of the evaluation confirmed that the Board continues to be well established and well functioning, supported by a strong belief in the strategy and effectiveness in collaboration with the committees and executive management. The Board is responsible for the company's strategic direction and the assessment of ESG-related risks and reflected in the governance illustration in the 2025 annual report. The Board receives a minimum of two annual updates on Pandora's sustainability agenda. So with that, I will now hand over first to Berta for a business and brief strategic update and then followed by Anders, who will present an update on the financial performance for 2025.

Back, Peter. So this is my first Annual General Meeting with Pandora, and I have been really looking forward to this meeting today. I will start by giving you a brief overview of Pandora development during 2025. 2025 was marked by a challenging consumer environment. And while our growth came in below expectations, we see clear opportunities to improve our performance going forward. During 2025, during this year, Pandora delivered an organic growth of 6% with a like-for-like growth of 2% for the full year. Our core business remained very resilient throughout the year, and it was supported by different innovation, especially the successful launch of the collection Pandora Talisman. The EBIT margin for the year reached 23.9%, supported by disciplined control and very effective pricing. This allowed us actually to offset the vast majority of the pressures that we experienced during the year. Returns and earnings per share also remained robust. We delivered an EPS of DKK 68.1, representing a 5% growth year-on-year. All these results are telling us something. This underlines the resilience of Pandora's business even in a very turbulent environment. This provides a solid foundation as we are course correcting certain areas of the business during 2026 and beyond, and I will going to touch on that later. Now let me turn now on the guidance for 2026. For 2026, we are targeting organic growth in the range of plus 1% to plus 2%. This reflects a like-for-like growth of minus 3% to 0%, supported by around a 2% contribution from our network expansion. Now let me be very honest here. This is definitely below the level that we will aim to deliver in a very normal year. And this is mainly driven by two main factors. First, we are not expecting any meaningful support from the macroeconomic environment, which remains very uncertain, and I'm sure you know, for our consumers. Secondly, we do see the need to step change execution in a number of areas that I will touch on later. Now on profitability, we are guiding from an EBIT margin of 21% to 22% in 2026. So this guidance reflects our continued commitment to investing in the business while maintaining strong margins supporting the long-term value creation. As I mentioned previously, and Peter alluded to it as well, 2025 was a challenging year, but we continue to build our -- so we continue to build on our strong core while driving growth across other collections. In our core business, charms and carriers delivered 1% like-for-like growth for the year. So the core remains resilient, and it continues to represent still the majority of our revenue base. We were also very encouraged by the initial performance of our Talisman collection since its launch since 2025, which is really showing that with new aesthetic, we can generate appeal to attract new consumers and continue to bring the loyalty of our existing ones. In our Fuel With More segment, we delivered 3% like-for-like growth in 2025. Now that growth was supported by solid performance in our Pandora Essence, a collection that we launched 2 years ago and also on our lab-grown diamonds innovations and collections. For our design strategy, we have outlined initial plans on how we plan to reignite growth across both the Core and the Fuel With More. In Essence, this is going to be about sharpening our design priorities and introducing newness more deliberately across the portfolio, bringing greater creative energy to the core and more confidence as we scale Fuel With More. Now let's go to our regional performance. From quarter 4 2025, Pandora implemented a new geographical revenue disclosure format covering EMEA, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific. This update was driven by the increased importance of markets previously grouped under rest of Pandora beyond the 7 former key markets. So let me start with these results on this classification. Firstly, EMEA is our largest region. Like-for-like growth was flat for the full year 2025. Performance really varied across markets. And while some delivered solid results, the overall outcome underlines the need for targeted strategic adjustment, which I will return to that shortly. At country level, Spain, for example, continued to perform very strongly, demonstrated that sustained brand strength can continue to drive growth even in markets where we have high market share. Italy, on the other hand, saw weaker performance, reinforcing the need for a more decisive shift in how demand is activated in our mature markets. In North America, like-for-like growth was 6% for the full year of 2025, where consumer confidence and store traffic were impacted by the macro environment. Now that said, brand strength remains solid and the long-term opportunity in the U.S. remains unchanged. Latin America delivered a minus 4% like-for-like performance in full year 2025. A new pricing architecture was implemented in January and early responses are encouraging for us. Lastly, Asia like-for-like growth was 1%, but with Japan continuing to perform well and providing a positive reference point for our future approach for the region. A clear priority for Pandora and for me remains, of course, the role of our stores and the role that they play in driving desirability and strengthening how the brand is perceived for our customers. By the end of 2025, approximately 800 concept stores have been converted to the new format, reinforcing Pandora as a desirable jewellery brand. Now looking ahead, we do continue to build on this progress, including rollout of new digital window displays across selected stores to increase the visibility to support the storytelling and to attract traffic. At the same time, like any strong brand, we will not stand still. We see future opportunities to evolve as well some tweaks on our store layouts, improving traffic, and presenting Pandora even more clearly as a desirable jewellery destination. Now as I anticipated, let me just move now to more of a strategic update. As CEO, my focus is to continue to strengthen the brand desirability and to deliver sustainable long-term like-for-like growth. This chart illustrates how we are evolving Pandora growth engine for its next phase. Our focus continued to be to recruit new consumers into the brand. That remains unchanged. What has evolved is our understanding of what truly drives that recruitment as both the brand and our markets mature. Under the Phoenix strategy, we rebuilt the foundations of the business. We strengthened our core collections. We rebuilt brand awareness through paid media. And as a consequence, we delivered a strong like-for-like growth. That work was essential, and it has brought us to where we are today. Now what brought us here is not what will take us forward. As Pandora matures, growth is increasingly driven by desirability, not reach alone. In response, we are sharpening our growth engine around 3 interconnected pillars. Design, brand and markets. Let me start by design. Design drives desirability. So on design, our priority is to reenergize the full portfolio. Our collections need greater distinctiveness to reignite desirability, while our smaller and underrepresented collections require more depth and breadth to scale their growth. On brand, we are shifting from awareness led paid reach only towards paid reach and cultural relevance. So earned media becomes now a core KPI, improving efficiency while driving traffic, demand activation and conversations about Pandora. Now on market, we are moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach, and instead, we are calibrating the growth engine by market maturity, prioritizing desirability in high penetration markets while continuing to invest in reach where penetration still remains lower. Now let me be very clear. This is an evolution. This is not a reset of what Pandora is. It simply builds on what has worked and strengthened Pandora growth engine, and we are just shifting some tweaks for the next phase of Pandora value creation. Now of course, this is all about driving the top line growth, and of course, this is essential. But now I am very sure now that you are aware one of the big headwinds that is facing the industry and that we have been navigating in 2025. And this is, of course, the rising silver price. I would like just to explain how are we addressing this challenge. While we continue to deliver a superior, insist a superior consumer proposition that remains fully aligned, I insist fully aligned with Pandora DNA. So we are doing this through a decisive product innovation that evolves our product platform and strengthen the long-term resilience of the business. What are we doing? We are expanding our offering with our platinum-plated jewellery that is built on our unique signature proven metal alloy. With this innovation, Pandora will be the first jewellery brand to bring platinum-plated jewellery to market at a scale, which is combining the aesthetics of a precious metal with superior everyday performance. We have conducted comprehensive consumer testing on this proposition, and the results have been very encouraging for the consumer response. For Pandora, broadening its metal mix is highly accepted and expected from our consumers as the leader of a desirable accessible jewellery brand. This unique and proven metal alloy has been specifically engineering to optimize the platinum plated. It delivers certified tarnish and water resistance. It is hypoallergenic and therefore, outperforms traditional silver in daily wear, which is really making it highly relevant for consumers today, while it's helping us reduce the exposure to silver pricing volatility. So with this brief introduction and strategic update, I will move now on another important aspect that you know we truly care about, and this is, of course, sustainability. Sustainability is at the core of Pandora. We aim at being a low-carbon business, drive circularity principles in everything we do and act as an example of what it means to be inclusive and fair. Our objective remains to halve carbon emissions across the full value chain by 2030 and to be zero carbon business by 2040. Now we have taken very important steps in 2025 with now a total 17% reduction in total greenhouse emissions, compared to 2029. Now we also have continued to drive circular innovation in 2025, using 100% recycled silver and gold in the crafting of our jewellery. And this, of course, this reinforce our leadership in circular innovation in the jewellery industry. And we also continue to make progress on social sustainability. Women represent now 44% of senior leadership position. All our -- around our own operations run as well on 100% renewable energy. So with that, I am going to hand over to Anders. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Berta, and good [ morning ], and welcome to everyone participating today. The table that you have on this slide shows our financial KPIs for 2025, compared to last year. And some of the numbers we've already spoken about, so I'll just call out a few of those. But overall, the numbers that you can see on this slide underscores that our financial performance remained solid for the full year, even in a quite challenging external environment. And even though, as Berta said that we ended the year softer than our own expectations on the top line. In the year '25, we delivered organic growth of 6% and like-for-like of 2%, as Berta also mentioned. It was just to repeat that below our own expectations and the strategic initiatives that Berta just went through are designed and intended to course correct the business in a number of areas and get growth back at a higher level. Looking at the gross margin, we ended last year at a very strong level at 79.1% and that's broadly in line with the prior year 2024 despite the fact that we had almost or more than actually 2 percentage points of headwind from commodity prices, the tariffs in the U.S. and foreign exchange. So we are quite pleased with that level, and it is reflecting the structural strength of our business model, including the continued efficiencies that we are generating at our crafting facilities in Thailand, as well as the benefit that we have from the price increases that we implemented during 2025. As we continue to invest in the brand and in growth this year and in the future years, our EBIT margin ended at 23.9% last year. That was exactly in line with the guidance that we have set out for the year, but around 1% lower than 2024, reflecting these external headwinds that we already mentioned, the U.S. tariffs and silver prices, not the least. Lastly, I just wanted to highlight the cash conversion that you can see roughly in the middle of the table, a solid 65% cash conversion in 2025 and within that range of 65% to 70% that we announced at the Capital Market Day in London back in 2023. So again, the overall message on this slide is that despite increased external headwinds, our financial model remained robust in 2025 with strong margins, solid profitability and attractive returns. Now if we look a bit forward and see how the increase in silver prices and the transition to platinum-plated jewellery will impact our EBIT margin in the years to come. So a lot of text and illustrations on this slide. But what we are experiencing today is an exceptional turbulent external environment driven not least by the significant commodity headwinds that we are seeing. As Berta mentioned, we are introducing platinum-plated jewellery, which will be a great help in offsetting these headwinds from 2027 next year and onwards. This transition to platinum-plated jewellery will reduce our exposure to commodity prices over time. Our exposure to silver specifically will decline significantly, while the new platinum exposure will be far more limited. And even though the platinum-plated jewellery will require more craftsmanship, so more labor cost, then labor cost is a more stable and predictable cost than commodities. Overall, with this transition, we will remain a structural high-margin company. And as you can see on the bridge here to the far right, we will expect to get to more than 21% EBIT margin in the midterm once the transition to platinum plated has been completed, and this is based on a silver price of $82 and that also means that our strong historical free cash flow generation remains intact and there are no fundamental changes to our financial model. Now a few more comments to the bridge on the slide. The starting point on the bridge to the left is the guidance for this year 2026 of 21% to 22%. In 2027, next year, we will have a significant headwind from the higher silver prices, but based on the transition of roughly half of the targeted silver-based assortment into platinum plated, that gives us enough margin uplift next year to keep the EBIT margin in 2027 above 14% at a silver price of $82. And this is before some one-off transition cost. And that above 14% EBIT margin, that's what you -- the black bar that you have just to the left of the middle in the bridge. The transition cost, that includes that we will see some deleverage at our crafting site in Thailand because we are initially partly using external crafting capacity OEMs as it's called, to some extent, and there will also be certain remelt cost as one-off cost next year. So including those transition costs, the EBIT margin next year will be at least 12%. And that's the black bar that you can see in the middle here. As we then transition the remaining targeted silver assortment into platinum plated and as we optimize our crafting, we will get to at least 21% EBIT margin in the midterm. This transition also requires approximately DKK 600 million in one-off investments to rebuild our crafting facilities. And of that, DKK 300 million to DKK 500 million will be invested already this year in 2026. And with that, I'll hand it back to Pernille.

Thank you, Anders, and thank you also, Peter and Berta for the overview of Pandora's activities in 2025. As mentioned in the introduction, we will deal with Items 1 and 2 on the agenda together. So I will now move to Item 2 concerning adoption of the 2025 annual report. On the screen here, you will see excerpt from the independent auditor's report, and I have been presented with Pandora's annual report signed by Pandora's executive management, the Board and Pandora's auditor, EY. And in the independent auditor's report, EY states the following. In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements and the parent company financial statements give a true and fair view of the financial position of the group and the parent company as at 31st December 2025 and of the results from the group's and the parent company's operations and cash flows for the financial year, 1st of January to 31st of December 2025 in accordance with IFRS accounting standards as adopted by the EU and additional requirements of the Danish Financial Statements Act.

At this point, I would like to hear if there are any comments or questions to the report on Pandora's activities during '25 and the annual report for '25. And I have already received a notification from two shareholder representatives. So firstly, I will invite Claus Wiinblad from ATP to say a few words.

Thank you for the floor. My name is Claus Wiinblad, and I represent ATP. First of all, thank you to the Chairman, CEO and CFO for their report and presentation of the results for 2025. 2025 has been a tough year for Pandora with introduction of tariffs, muted consumer sentiment and silver price that has -- which has gone through the roof. Looking at the actual result for '25, the EBIT margin is actually holding up really well, among other things, helped by the hedging of the silver price. But the slowdown in the like-for-like sales growth is a concern. The concern consists of two elements. Firstly, well the sales of the moments platform have peaked and therefore, the risk of decline. And secondly, well the Fuel With More can grow fast enough to drive an overall improvement in the like-for-like sales performance. There are many moving parts during '25, which has affected Pandora, both in the short term and also in the long term. Pandora has communicated very well about all these moving parts, silver, tariff, et cetera, which has been really appreciated as we heard in the presentation from the CFO. Pandora has really done an excellent job in creating the best possible transparency around all the challenges. That being said, it has also been a rough year for us as shareholders. During '25, the share price dropped by 46%. And from the peak, the share price has dropped by more than 60%. I would also like to ask a question regarding the launch of EVERSHINE, the upcoming platinum-plated product. The product, as we heard, has been widely tested in major markets. But what's the experience with these kind of tests and how a good prediction are they actually of whether the consumer will eventually buy the product when it's launched. Secondly, what are the expectations for EVERSHINE? Is launch primarily going to help protect the margin from the high silver price? Or does Pandora actually see a potential for EVERSHINE to be a driver for improving the like-for-like sales growth in the medium term? I would also like to comment on the remuneration report. We are voting against the report due to the extraordinary award in '25 to the CFO. In principle, we opposed these types of extraordinary awards and find that it's an interim, which should only be used in very special circumstances. It's not that we don't appreciate the management team's performance, but our opinion is that it is well covered within the ordinary remuneration scheme. Lastly, I would also like to thank Alexander Lacik for his great effort as CEO of Pandora and to extend a warm welcome to Berta De Pablos-Barbier as our new CEO. With those words, I would like to wish management and employees best of luck in their work and with the challenges ahead in '26. Thank you for the...

Okay. Thank you, Claus Wiinblad, for your comments and inputs and questions. I'll try to answer a couple of the questions, and then I will hand over to Berta to answer, especially around our expectation around EVERSHINE. You said you had concern about whether we are able to grow moments going forward. And we are not that concerned. We will be able to grow moments, and we see very healthy signs of that. Regarding Fuel With More, you also had the question is will that really create growth for us? What we see is that we have probably in the last year or years, we have done a little bit too much on too many areas. We see that when we really focus our resources, we create growth in Fuel With More. And I think the Talisman is one very good example that was very successful. Then I will just give a short comment also on the remuneration report. As I mentioned, it is not approved. It's only for advisory vote, but it's not approved by the AGM. And -- but that being said, we -- as a Board and the Remuneration Committee, we do what we think is right for the company at the moment when we take decisions like, for instance, an extraordinary bonus. I would also like to underline that this is according to our remuneration policy that was approved at the AGM last year and the year before. So it is according to the policy, but I fully agree that this is something that should be exceptional and nothing that should happen every year. But I also have to say that I think we have been through some quite exceptional years, the last -- I would actually say, since COVID and maybe especially the last year. So with that, I will hand back -- hand over to Berta to give some comments on EVERSHINE.

Okay. So let me start by explaining a little bit how the journey started with the platinum-plated proposition to the consumer. When we take decisions like this, we first start by answering the first question, which is what is Pandora for our consumers? And that's how this journey has started. What we know is that the consumers that buy Pandora, they buy mainly for three things. They want well-designed pieces that are great quality and is allowing them to express who they are, how they feel, what they want to remember, who they are. Whenever we talk with consumers, the metal didn't come as the first driver of purchase. Today, our consumers buy white metal products and yellow metal products. The yellow metal products that they are buying today are plated already. The business of our gold plated products, so yellow metal plated product has been increasing year-over-year, which is signaling to us that the consumers are already willing to accept platinum-plated products. Once we came to this conclusion, the second thing that we did is understanding about, okay, let's ask again, is silver really, really important or not for consumers. And we found that for the big majority, the fact that is silver, in some cases, it was unknown. And in other cases, it was the white metal proposition that we have for them. Next stage, therefore was to look into what was the best white metal proposition that we could offer to our consumers and continue to deliver well-designed pieces, high crafted quality with meaning for them. And through that, we went through a big offering of other white metals out there. I'm not going to bore you with the science, but we could have done rhodium, palladium, titanium, et cetera. And what it came very apparent to our consumers is that they wanted a metal they could recognize. That was the case with platinum that they considered precious. And today, 80% of our consumers told us platinum is a precious material. And last but not least, a metal that they were associated already with the use of jewellery, not cars or electronic components. So then platinum plated became the obvious choice for this proposition. But then we didn't stop there. We went to ask our consumers, okay, what is it that you like about platinum? The only thing that our consumers knew about platinum is that it was a precious metal, and that was enough. But what we are telling consumers, and I'm going to tell you into the test facing, we tested about what are the benefits about bringing platinum plated in addition to the preciousness, which was already a good driver. One of our biggest barriers and complaints that we have from our consumers is that silver tarnish. So they buy a beautiful, shiny product. And if they are not aware and our younger consumers, they are getting less and less aware about you need to polish your silver, they get frustrated with their white metal becoming not white after some usage. The beauty of platinum is what I was saying before is that it's good for tarnishing. They can wear it to the shower, to the beach and it's very resistant because platinum is a very hard metal and therefore, it's resistant to scratching, okay? So all that then cover what we like to call when we launch an innovation, the desirability phase is the product that we are going to be bringing to the market desirable to our consumers. All these phasing, it was tested every single time for consumers. So we are not only talking about one testing, we are talking about multiple testing in the last 12 months. The last one that we did was a quantitative testing that was about 25,000 to 28,000 consumers across the world in different markets. It was quantitative and allow actual consumers to really choose and put them in what we call a shopping environment to see are they going to actually purchase that product. So it was online, but they were in real situation of purchasing our products. Now of course, we are not stopping here. This year, we are not launching or transforming the collection from silver to platinum. This is, as you know, it's going to happen from 2027. But this year already, we are introducing and learning real life about putting in front in our stores, real platinum plated products in front of the consumer. And then it's going to help us to understand about tricks, what needs to be polished, what needs to be tweaked, so that the product is really the best presented to our consumers. So we still will be learning this year, but we have enough evidence already that we are in safe hands. This is on the desirability part. Of course, the next thing that we look is that is the product viable. And I think Anders explained that very well. I'm not going to get into that. And the last thing is it feasible on our lines. And it was very good for platinum plated, and that's why the financial is good is that we can continue to produce the platinum-plated products into our Thailand and Vietnam production sites. Now what we call EVERSHINE, just to be very clear, is the core. So it's this signature metal alloy. That metal alloy was not something that has been invented in the last 12 months. It's a metal alloy that we've been using since 2008 when we first launched the rose plated. Then it was tweaked when we launched our yellow plated. And then what the teams in Thailand needed to do is work with the best suppliers on composing different alloys to see how this alloy was going to be optimized, so that it was perfectly prepared for the process of plating with platinum, which is slightly different to gold. We're not get into all the detail. Happy to discuss all that for ages, but it's just a different -- slightly different. So they've been perfecting both the alloy and the electroplating processes to make sure that we get the quality and the durability of that. The reason why we are calling EVERSHINE is just to signal that it's something that is own to Pandora. But for the moment, what we know, again, let's see what happened in the stores is that what really consumers care is that it's platinum plated.

Thank you, Peter and Berta, and ATP for the questions. I will now invite [ Carsten Christiansen ] from Danish [indiscernible].

[Interpreted] Thank you very much for the floor. My name is [ Carsten Christiansen ], and I represent the Danish Shareholders' Association, and I'm myself a shareholder in Pandora. First of all, I would like to thank the Chairman of the Board and also thank Berta and Anders for their reports of the annual report and annual finances. I would also like to give a warm welcome to our new CEO, Berta. And I hope that you, as a CEO, will also prioritize keeping our small shareholders well informed about developments in Pandora. Now the development in sales. When I look at the sales development in Pandora, there's been growth in the past 5 years. But unfortunately, the rate of growth has been declining, both for organic growth and LFL. For 2026, the outlook is unfortunately negative growth of down to minus 3% for like-for-like and the outlook for organic growth is not very high either. So could the Chair maybe say a bit about the targets for sales growth in the medium term? Now sustainability and recycling, I would like to commend Pandora for the efforts in sustainability and recycling of materials. It's great to see Pandora work with renewable energy sources, lab-grown diamonds and not least recycling of precious metals such as gold and not least silver. Silver is not just used for jewellery, but also for cutlery, candlesticks holders, and it's also an industrial metal used in both data centers, batteries in e-vehicles and solar panels. According to the Canadian company, First Majestic Silver Mining, there's an annual consumption of silver of 1.150 million ounces, but extraction from silver mines is only 835 million ounces. That means there's a deficit of 315 million ounces that need to be covered in a different way. Therefore, it's important that Pandora works to recycle precious metals such as silver. So when there's a greater demand than supply, we know it means rising prices. Over the past year, we have seen a rising silver price, which has put negative pressure on Pandora's share price, probably rightly so. On Page 133 in the annual report, it's described which effect the increasing silver price will have on the EBIT and the EBIT margin. Therefore, I would also like for the Chair to say something about which opportunities Pandora has to reduce the negative effect further. I mean the negative effect of rising silver prices on the EBIT margin. To what extent will it be possible to maybe pass on the increasing prices and precious metals on the consumer without it causing to negative effect on sales. With these comments and questions, I would also like to thank for the floor.

Okay. Thank you for your questions and inputs. First, I'd like to comment on the -- on your question regarding the long-term sales growth objectives for the company. As we have previously mentioned, for 2026, we are targeting organic growth of minus 1% to plus 2% and that reflects like-for-like growth of minus 3% to 0%, and that's supported approximately by 2% contribution from network expansion. And this is driven by two main factors. I think we've been through this also earlier today. First, we do not currently expect meaningful support from the macroeconomic environment as consumer demand remains quite uncertain. Second, we see the need to step up execution in several key areas as discussed earlier today. I think we said this several times, Berta also mentioned it that we are not happy with that development going forward, but that's the guidance we have for 2026. If you look beyond the current transition period, we continue to expect that we will return to positive growth, both organic and like-for-like. And we will rework in due time on specific medium-term targets as our current medium-term target runs out in 2026. So we'll come back to this. But I think my main message is we are not happy with the guidance we are showing for 2026, and we are taking actions, as Berta has mentioned, to course correct so that we get back to growth again. Then it was about the silver prices. I think we have also covered that, but that is obviously a very big challenge for us. Silver prices has increased from when we had our last Capital Markets Day, and we announced our long-term targets. Silver prices has increased from at that time, $25, $28 to yesterday, it was $88, and it's even was as high as $120 weeks ago. And now it's around $80, $90. So that is obviously a big challenge. And that is also why we do this transition to Evershine. And as Berta explained, we have started it. We are testing. We have been testing this with quite a lot of consumers. And we will launch the first products to be -- to show to consumers already end of this year, but the transition will really start '27 and onwards. But we are sure that we will be able to reduce our dependency on silver and other commodities substantially by doing this. And at the same time, actually be able to offer the consumer with a better product than silver due to the reasons Berta mentioned regarding tonnage, water resistance and so on. But that being said, I think silver will still be an important part of our assortment. We will -- and we have also increased prices. We did that during 2025, and we will continue to do that also this year. But we also have to remember that we're going to start of Pandora and it's about being affordable for people that is important. So there is a limit to how much we can increase prices without compromising our promise to our consumers. So we'll do a gradual selection and reduce our dependency. So I think that's the answer to the 2 questions. Thank you...

Any other comments or questions from shareholders?

[Interpreted] Thank you. My name is Stefan Royan, and I will speak Danish as we are in our capital of Copenhagen and in the main office of Pandora. But I would also like to say a great thank you to Berta for a very good report and thank her for speaking English so well and so calmly. So those of us that are not 100% comfortable with English were able to follow along. I understood almost everything. There are, of course, always words you don't understand, but thank you for speaking so slowly and intelligently. And also to Anders, thank you for a very good financial report. Anders has actually been called one of the best CFOs in Copenhagen by analysts. And -- but I still think it's interesting what ATP mentioned, and they expressed it very clearly by not wanting to vote for the remuneration report, which we should actually also have seen on the screen. So I think we still need to know what is it about this extraordinary bonus of 2025, which has maybe already been paid out. I don't know whether that's already been paid out, this incentive. Because executive management in the companies in Copenhagen, about DKK 20-plus million plus all sorts of benefits and incentive schemes. One of the persons that make the most is the CEO of TORM's, and he's selling some shares now, which means he makes DKK 100 million because they get so many shares as part of the incentive schemes every year. And in recent years, I think it's been -- it's become too much certainly in the shipowner TORM, but also in other companies. But it's as if nobody cares what shareholders think about this. For instance, Carlsberg CEO they pay him based on what the international brewery owner gets. And then in London, they get DKK 50 million. So the CEO of Carlsberg also gets DKK 50 million, DKK 60 million in just a base fee, which is ridiculous considering what people earn in Copenhagen, where it's DKK 15 million to DKK 28 million for CEOs and a bit lower for CFOs. But that's something Carlsberg has decided -- and there -- that's the Foundation -- the Carlsberg Foundation, and they're the majority shareholder. So you can't do anything about it and just shows how ridiculous some of these levels are. I don't think you are paid too much in Pandora, but I just want to ask about incentive schemes and share buybacks, share options for the executive and 40 employees. Previously, it was just the 3 top managers, and now it's almost 50 people. I mean it's just gotten too much in recent years, I think. So I'd like to hear a bit -- a few more details. And about your new annual report, it has a front and a back, and it's already fallen apart. So that's the front page and you get the back page and they already come apart in my hands. I mean this is just for amateurs, I mean, you need an annual report that stays together in A4 size, not half of it. And then it has to be like reading a book. And then it's -- then you can go to your cottage in the weekend and read all your annual reports. That's what I do. This -- I mean, it's like buying a car in this. I mean, it's worth, especially with this spiral setup. You should change that because when you're a professional company, you should be professional in everything. I mean this as an annual report, as for amateurs, lots of pictures and numbers now, they take up half of A4 because it has to be so narrow. And I mean, you are an extremely capable company, but this is not good. An annual report, A4 format. I mean, I respect the environment, it's just halved. Next year, how can you make it even smaller next year? I regret to think. I mean this is laughable. Now how to distribute what has been earned, the profit allocation. There's a very high share buyback program. This was developed in Wall Street by scrupulous stock brokers and huge American stock brokers like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, et cetera, et cetera. They came up with all this share buyback, and they love it in the U.S. Yesterday, I read that Salesforce, one of the largest IT companies, they take out debt to do share buybacks. We shouldn't be that crazy in Copenhagen. We shouldn't emulate what Americans do. What's happened this year? I mean, Trump is now in the White House. We know about that. We hear about it every day. We shouldn't emulate Americans. They're not our friends anymore. What we thought for 50 years that they were our friends, it influences Novo Nordisk, it influences Danish industry, exporting to the U.S., the reputation of the U.S. is influenced, it influences us because it's the largest market for Pandora. The U.S. is the largest individual country for us, and we shouldn't emulate what those stock brokers do in Wall Street. Our share price has gone from over DKK 1,300 in December 2024 to DKK 760. So it's gone down 46.6%. Pandora announced we'll buy back DKK 4 billion share buyback, but it was DKK 4.6 billion in 2025. So we've burned a lot of money now. Well, there was a very high share price, and now it's gone down. We've burned about DKK 480 million a month on share buyback. And now we have a share price that's halved. And this year, it's dropped 31.6% to now about DKK 476. So even such a large amount as EUR 4.6 billion has no stabilizing effect on the share price, none. It's just meant that the share price has gone down and down and down. It's a trend. The silver prices have gone up and Pandora has gone down. And it's not fair because Pandora hedged most of the silver consumption for 2025. And we were also told in the third of second quarterly report that you have bought silver at fixed prices, and also for 2026, and that's why we only have 11 basis points of the silver prices, even though it's increased by more than 100% in 2025 and continue to increase in 2026. That's because Pandora is very, very good at doing this properly in the finance department. So just like with oil, you can buy futures, and that has been used very capably by Pandora. And I would like Anders to also confirm whether you've hedged the price sometime in the third quarter with the prices that were there last year on the commodity of silver. But about share buyback? I don't even remember the name of the Chairman of the Board right now. But I mean, share buybacks, you should stop. You should really stop. The internal value of the Pandora shares is actually also much lower than the about DKK 500 million or DKK 1,100 or DKK 1,328, which it was in 2024 because Pandora does not spend the profit in consolidating, but spends it on share buyback. And I would like to thank you for the dividends every year, but allocation of profits and also the debt has been increased. It's -- I think it would be better to reduce debt instead of paying out or doing share buybacks. But when you want to pay out to shareholders, you should do it through dividends. And I hope you have now learned that share buybacks doesn't influence the share price. It has no positive effect on your opportunity to spend $500 million on a new factory in Vietnam. You could have paid that in cash if we hadn't had done share buybacks. Now instead, we have debt in the facility. That's not smart management. And I read about that facility already in November 2024, I think that you invest $500 million in a brand-new facility in Vietnam. So these are important things I hope you don't just talk about on the Board, but that you also change completely. because this year's developments have shown that such large share buyback programs have no effect in the stock market. So I mean, you cannot argue with that. About Berta's report on our main markets, Europe was the largest market she said. She also said a bit about Spain. I don't remember the details, but we have a very beautiful CEO. Now are you from Spain, by the way? Right. Yes. But Spain, Italy, France and the U.K., they are the largest markets for Pandora historically. I think still are. And Germany is the fourth largest market. And as Europe is the largest market for Pandora, I would like to hear a bit more about how are we doing our other large markets such as France, Italy, the U.K. and Germany. How are things developing there? Has it been difficult in all the markets? Has it been particularly difficult in some markets than others? What's the development in Europe where we have the largest sales? And we are told that the Chinese are taking over everything. No, we are not being taken over by the Chinese. We produce lots of things in Europe. We have the largest airplane factory, Airbus, our cars we act with the world leading in many areas, saying Europe can't do anything, forget it. That's not true. Europe is a very innovative area and have very, very, very good companies. And you know that if you, like me, spend 50, 60 hours a week investigating all that. So I would like to hear about what happens in Europe. And maybe there's some progress also for '26, '27 and where things not going so well. And then I would like for it to be confirmed and well, maybe from our CFO. Yes, I would like an answer for our CFO when it comes to financial matters. Has the share buyback program for 2026 been decided? Or will you stop it on my recommendation? Or will you change something? We, as shareholders, would be happy to get DKK 2 more in dividends a year or if we get dividends 4x a year, just like share buyback programs are done over a year, we would also like to get main dividends here around the AGM, maybe DKK 40 here and then DKK 25 at the quarterly report. So would that be possible to have dividends paid out more frequently? Alexander Lacik is not here today. I think he isn't here today. Is he? No. Well, I would still like to thank him, the sweet who got Pandora back on track. He was incredibly good. And he loved to fight for our brand everywhere in the world. And we -- when he told the Editor and Chief of the newspaper person, who didn't understand what a brand is and how you maintain a brand. He explained it to him. He was unusually capable. And I hope our new CEO, Berta, will be just as good because I -- we just want to wish you all the best for the future and a better annual -- physical annual report next year.

Just a brief comment that the remuneration report you asked for will be the next item on the agenda, will be presented as it always is by Peter. And you had, I noted, 5 questions, and we will, I think, answer them. Maybe Peter, will you do the first and maybe Berta will talk a bit about the European markets. And then Anders, a question for you regarding hedging of the silver price and share buyback.

Yes. Some of the questions were actually for me a little bit unclear. But I think regarding the annual report, it's individual preferences, what you prefer, whether it's A4 or A5 format or whatever. I think most people actually read the report that online, but we take note of that. And of course, it should be good quality, I fully agree on that. I think regarding share buyback, but -- and also the question regarding dividend payment several times during the year, I think Anders can come back to that. But my note is that we have meant regarding shareholder return, we have some investors that prefer dividend, some investors that prefer share buyback, and we try to find a balance to meet the requirements from all our shareholders. And even though you mentioned that we have bought shares and the share price today is lower, we have also been in the opposite territory some years back in time. And then I think Berta will comment on the market development and Anders on share buyback and dividend.

Good. Thank you for your comments and questions. Let me talk about Europe a little bit about why I chose to talk about Spain on my report. It's not because I am Spanish, it's because in Spain, we have really high market share. We are the leader. We are the #1. And despite that, in 2025, we grew double digit, about 19%. And that has nothing to do with what I was doing and neither with my physical aspect. The other markets, and I think this is why despite the double-digit growth that was happening in Spain, we are not seeing in other markets. And the other reason why I talk about Italy is because of the mature markets. So Italy, Germany and U.K. being the biggest one, as you rightly mentioned, they were declining. So Italy was at minus 9%, Germany minus 5%, and the U.K. minus 4%. So it is, of course, obvious that in order to bring back the growth of Pandora and deliver the like-for-like growth, we do need to address the issues that we have in this market. Yes. And France, it was negative as well. Now I'm originally from Spain, but I've actually been living in France most of my life. So I know that market very well. I also happen to live in the U.K. and I understand what the situation is in those markets. So let me tell you a little bit of why we are doing about that. One of the things that we are realizing on the mature markets, and I'm going to put France on a separate bucket because it has a different problem, is that in both the U.K., Italy, Spain and Germany, the brand is healthy. So what do we mean by the brand is healthy. When we say that a brand has high awareness, so people are aware of the brand, not only when you tell them do you know Pandora, now we have that. But also when you ask them, can you please let me know some jewelry brands that you happen to think about, Pandora comes as part of that, what we call the repertoire. So the group of brands that consumers think when they are thinking about buying jewelry brand. So awareness of the strategy about talking about Pandora has been efficient because people know Pandora. What we also know is the second thing that we ask them is what we call in marketing consideration is that, okay, you know about Pandora. The second thing is that would you consider buying Pandora? And then the answer is, yes, I will consider buying Pandora. So I know Pandora, I like Pandora. So the next question that we ask them is, okay, when was the last time that you came to a Pandora store? And the answer that we get in average is, I don't know 3 years ago, 4 years ago, okay, so you like us, you know us, but you are not coming to visit us. Why? And the answer in these markets, again, I insist, in this market is because I already have your products. I already have my bracelet. I already have the charms. So why should I come back? And the answer we need to give them, and this is when we talk about marketing words like reenergizing our collections is basically bringing newness, bringing new products that are going to make those consumers say, I have a reason now to come back to Pandora because I don't have that product. And this is exactly the proof point that we did last year with the launch of Talisman. Why do we talk about Talisman? We talk about Talisman a lot because this was an attempt of -- launch was a successful attempt of launching a new collection that was about charms, it was about necklaces, it was about -- but it was very different from what the consumer of Pandora is known, which is more the playful, white metal, colorful charms and it's working. Just to give you one data point, in Italy, mature market, the collection performed 7 points higher than it did in the rest of the market. And we have qualitative verbatim from consumers coming to the stores and telling us, finally, you launch something new. So that's why we call reenergizing our collection, and this is going to be the focus from when we start, from -- and under my leadership, we are really focusing on that creative part. That's one of the thing. And the second part is that when you launch something new, the press, the influencers, the creators, the consumer, they see something new. This is something exciting. So what do they do? They talk about it. So this is what we call earned media. So it's not media that you pay on the TV, on the YouTube, it's earned because you have done something exciting. And I would like to quote Oscar Wilde. He said, one, one of the worst things about not -- about being talked about is not being talked about. So this is the same for any brand. So we need to do things that generate conversation, that generate what is calling the profession earned media so that the consumer is something really exciting in Pandora and they come to our stores. So that's the situation, okay, in the thing. In France, I won't go long about it. We have a different issue. Everything that I have told you about the brand health is true for Germany, for Italy, for the U.K. and of course, which is Spain, which is delivering. And now the next question is, so why is Spain growing and no doubt, Spain has been doing a lot of them talk about. They've been activated that earned media muscle and therefore, the consumer know that Pandora is doing that. There are other measures that we grow like the jewelry perception, the stylist bar, et cetera, et cetera. And all those things are extremely positive in Spain because that marketing model has shifted already in Spain, but has not shifted in other mature markets. Having said that, in the other markets where we have low share, we continue to go to be noticed, Pandora, Pandora, reach, reach, reach, we exist, we are here. So I hope that answered your question.

[Interpreted] Stefan, thank you for that. And also silver question. You're right that we did hedge quite a lot of silver back in April 2025. Just after the so-called Liberation Day, the silver prices dropped quite a lot, which means that for this year, we basically have hedged all of our silver production at a silver price of $32, compared to $85 this morning. So the good thing is that, that buys us a bit of time for the platinum plated transition that is ahead of us. So then on the other question, what do we do with the cash that we are generating? I've been a CFO in different companies for almost 20 years. And in most areas, the feedback that we get from shareholders is pretty uniform, a pretty clear direction on different topics, except what to do with the cash. That's different opinions. It's probably a little bit like politics, you can argue left or right. There's different opinions. There's no really sort of factual right or wrong. But our capital structure policy is that with the excess cash that we generate every year, and fortunately, we are generating a lot of cash every year that will be returned to you is, first of all, we pay a dividend that increases every year. So this year, it's DKK 22 per share. Last year, it was DKK 20 per share, so up 10%. And then the remaining excess cash is being paid out as share buybacks. Specifically this year, 2026, we are only paying out a dividend. There's no share buyback program. And that's not because we are changing preferences unfortunately in a way. But we know that with this dip in the EBIT margin that comes next year, then that we know that if we paid out a share buyback already this year, our leverage, our financial gearing would become above our capital structure policy during next year and -- which we want to avoid. But when we set the capital structure policy that says an increasing dividend every year, the share buyback on top, we ask investors, shareholders around the world. And so in a way, the capital structure policy that we have and the split between dividend and share buybacks is an average of the opinions from shareholders in this room, around the world. So that's the best way for us to come with a compromise on different opinions on this matter. I would note that I'm just trying to do a little bit of math. Then when the company was IPO-ed, came on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange almost 15 years back, the company was listed with 130 million shares. Now there's only DKK 79 million left. And that's, of course, a consequence of that we have bought back shares basically every year since the IPO. Had we not done that, and we would still be standing here today with 130 million shares in the company, the share price would not be DKK 500 million, but DKK 300. So what is that, 40% lower. Then, of course, you would have received more dividend in the meantime, but it's not to say there has been some impact on the share buyback program that we have been running for the last many years, but input duly noted. And when we have a Capital Market Day coming up, then capital structure policy review is part of that exercise, and we will take input from different shareholders as we normally do. Thank you.

Thank you for your replies, and thank you for going through the major markets, and thank you, Anders. The opinions that are stated about share buyback programs and what to do about the profits every year. You get those opinions at road shows. You go to London, the financial capitals, Frankfurt, New York, et cetera. And then you hear from professional investors. For instance, the guys in the U.S., Morgan Stanley and all the people I mentioned, you have -- they have conferences like this just for the jewelry business, and they invite Pandora, for instance, JPMorgan, Citigroup, et cetera, these -- the customers of American banks who decide which 6 jewelry brands to buy. And Pandora wants to compete with American companies share buyback programs. And that's sort of buying into their premise -- the American premise. And I say forget about it. I can mention Volvo, one of the best companies in Europe. He has -- they have DKK 45 million in profit after tax, and they pay out DKK 13 per share. They have no debt. They have DKK 63 billion in cash, and they are the largest car producer in Europe. They have a uniquely strong financial position. And we could have the same situation in PANDORA if we just spent maybe 40% or 20% on share buybacks and have no debt or only a suitable debt. Now there's a break in share buyback because our debt is now too high. For many years, Pandora has even spent more than the net profit after tax on share buyback programs by taking out new debt. That doesn't make sense. I thought you would even understand that, Anders, because as I say, you're one of the most respected CFOs in all of Copenhagen. And there are many CFOs in Copenhagen. So don't just listen to institutional investors and pension funds in the U.S. and Frankfurt and London and in Paris. You also need to listen to your own common sense. And in many Danish companies, we also have common sense. Does it make sense to borrow money to do share buybacks? No. Does it make sense to spend 100% on share buybacks and dividends when we need to build a new facility in Vietnam and also other big investments in brand marketing and new stores every year. Every year, we build more than 200 new stores. It doesn't make sense to have such a large debt of DKK 13.8 billion. So when in 2027, you maybe feel us again money to share buyback programs. I would at least say do it 50-50. If you spend 80% of the cash flow and net profit, then at least a maximum of 50-50, 50% cash dividends and 50% in share buybacks. Then you've taken both parties into account. But like Volvo, I would suggest cash dividends. A lot of money has been burned on share buybacks when the share price was high. If you'd waited until today, you could have gotten twice as many shares. Thank you.

[indiscernible]

[Interpreted] As mentioned, my name is [indiscernible], share buyback, that's really been one of my main stays for many years. So thank you very much, Stefan, for bringing this up. It's really one of my [indiscernible] And what's difficult for us small shareholders is that we can't always see through the whole things about share buyback. So we risk really getting into trouble here. And the big shareholders, they run the whole price. And in politics, I don't like that the big players get it all and the small players don't get anything. And one of the worst companies when it comes to share buybacks is DSV. It's completely opaque to see through what their share buybacks are all about because they pay out their drivers and then they do share buybacks for their shareholders, but it just means that you're distorting the figures in the accounts when you do things like that. And you end up with a leverage that -- and I don't know if some of the top management have good share options, then it's great to buy back treasury shares because then the value of their options will increase. And all of these incentive schemes, they will increase in value. And I mentioned this at Novo Nordisk's AGM a few years ago, they bought nominally DKK 20 million in shares -- in treasury shares every year. And I said from the rostrum, you can keep doing that. And then the B share capital will be gone in 10 years' time. Then they stopped and then the share price was flat for a number of years because they didn't buy their own treasury shares. So it does have a huge effect. ROCKWOOL also got into trouble that way. They bought back a lot of shares back in 2007. So they were buying back shares at a share price of more than DKK 2,000. And then a crisis hit and the share price fell to something around DKK 600. So of course, with the number of shares that they bought, they had a loss of DKK 140 million. But where could we see that in the accounts? It didn't appear in the accounts because once you buy back treasury shares, you depreciate the value to 0 right away. So you can't see it in the accounts. And you don't show it in the 5-year overview that you have this many shares and you paid this much money for it. It's hidden from the shareholders. And the shares in Rockwool were used for employee shares and so on. And of course, the employees didn't want to buy the shares at a price of DKK 2,000. Once it fell to DKK 600, then they wanted to buy shares in the company. But the shareholders had to pay a loss of DKK 140 million for that little exercise. So I think 50-50 is a good suggestion. Don't spend more on share buybacks than you spend on dividends. That should be a general rule. And one more small thing. If you want a Pandora piece of jewelry, perhaps you could hand in your old gold and then get a good price on that because we all have gold and silver that we have no use for. So perhaps that could be a way of converting our old useless silver to something beautiful at Pandora. And I don't know the last time I had a silver spoon that I thought was really ugly, then I handed it in somewhere and converted it to something else. But how about these new products that are platinized? Can you then melt that and recycle it? I think there's a problem because will it have the same value as silver because silver is silver. But once you start using some sort of mixed product, it's hard to know what the value of it is. Right. So the best thing is that when you do all these good things, you should also show it in a 5-year overview because that gives us, as a shareholder, a good overview of what you've been doing for the last 5 years. How many treasury shares have you been buying at what price? It should all be evident in the accounts. But that's the fault of our government. I hope we will see a change of government now. Now our Prime Minister, Mette has spent DKK 80 billion on a war in Ukraine. So we need a change of government, and we need a better company act so that we know what we are buying when we are investing.

Thank you for the remarks. I think we have already had comments from Anders regarding share buyback and the 5-year overview, nothing much we can do about that, but there is an overview in the remuneration report, which is the next item on the agenda, as I noted before. But before we go to that, any other questions from shareholders at this point? Then I kindly remind you that we are actually at agenda item #2 regarding adoption of the annual report for '25. Any further comments in that respect? Otherwise, I will note that the report has been approved by the shareholders. Okay. Thank you for that. And then we will move to the next agenda item, which, as promised, is the remuneration report and presentation thereof. The remuneration report has been prepared by the Board and has been available on Pandora's website since February 4, and I will invite the Chairman to present the report. Peter, please.

Thank you, Pernille. I think we have commented also around this report several times today. But this report was also reviewed by the independent auditors, Ernst & Young. The auditors, they have not reported on any deficiencies in the report. As I mentioned earlier, the remuneration report has not been approved, and the Board and the Remuneration Committee has carefully considered the feedback they have received from shareholders prior to this meeting. Besides this, I want to share a few notes concerning the Board and the executive management remuneration in 2025. The total fee for the Board increased by 4% in 2025 versus 2024, and that is to ensure that the company's remuneration is in line with general market practice. The total remuneration of executive management in 2025 was down 28% from 2024, primarily due to the reduced variable remuneration as the performance threshold for the short-term incentive plan was not met. So I will now give the word back to Pernille.

Thank you, Peter. As mentioned in the introduction, the remuneration report is subject only to an advisory vote. We have already had a few comments for the report from ATP, among others. Are there any further comments for the report at this point? As mentioned by Peter also in his introduction and based on our review of the votes that have been cast through proxies and postal votes, I can conclude that the remuneration report for '25 has not been approved. This means that the company must in the remuneration report for this year 2026, explain how this voting has been taken into consideration. And with that said, I will move on to the next agenda item, which is proposal on the Board's remuneration for 2026. And the Board has asked me to present this item, and the Board proposes the following remuneration of the Board for 2026 is approved by the meeting. And that is a fixed base fee of DKK 602,000 changed from DKK 591,000, DKK 660,000 in last year, corresponding to an increase of 1.8%. And in accordance with the remuneration policy, the Chair will receive 3x the fixed base fee and the Deputy Chair 1.5x the fixed base fee. And the Chair and members of Audit Committee received 0.8x and 0.4x the fixed base fee, respectively. Also, the Chair and members of the Nomination Committee and Remuneration Committee received 0.5x and 0.25x the fixed base fee, respectively. I know, this is a lot of numbers. They have all been included in the agenda. Further, and in accordance with the remuneration policy, members of the Board received a travel allowance reflected as a percentage of the fixed base fee only when participating in any company-related meetings outside their country of residence. The fee for continental travel is 6% of the fixed base fee equal to DKK 36,120. And the fee for intercontinental travel is 12% of the fixed base fee equal to DKK 72,240. Are there any questions or comments regarding the remuneration for the Board for 2026? Then I will consider the Board's proposal to be approved by the shareholders. Thank you for that. And we will move on to agenda item #5, proposed distribution of profit. And for this item, I will give the word back to the Chair of the Board.

Thank you. Yes, as part of today's agenda, the Board proposes to shareholders to approve a dividend of DKK 22 per share. And this is around 10% growth versus the dividend paid last year, and that is reflective of Pandora's progressive dividend policy that Anders already mentioned. Pandora has a long-standing track record of strong cash returns to shareholders, including both dividends and share buybacks. And since the IPO, Pandora has consistently executed share buyback programs, resulting in approximately 41% of shares being repurchased and returned almost DKK 6 billion in cash last year alone. While significant cash distributions remain an important part of Pandora's financial algorithm, the Board proposes a temporarily lower overall distribution compared with prior years, and this reflects a prudent capital allocation approach as Pandora mitigates the impact of higher silver prices and supports the transition toward platinum-plated jewelry. As our plans to mitigate the current headwinds mature, we will revert on this topic in due course. And our capital structure policy, it remains unchanged. So I'll now give the word back to Pernille, please.

Thank you, Peter. Any comments for the proposal regarding distribution of profits in the form of dividend? Then I will note. Thank you that the Board has approved this item also -- sorry, the general meeting. Thank you for that. Moving on to Item #6, election of members to the Board. According to Pandora's Articles of Association, all Board members are elected by the general meeting and hold office until the next general meeting. As announced in July 2025, Christian Frigast has decided not to seek reelection this year. The Board would like to thank Christian for his many years of long-standing commitment and significant contributions to the Board and has asked me to repeat this here at the meeting. The remaining 7 of Pandora's existing Board members are up for reelection. You can see them here on the screen and a detailed description of each candidate and information on their other posts are made available in connection with the convening of the meeting. Are there any questions or comments from shareholders to the election of members for the Board? Then I will conclude that the Board has been reelected and congratulations to all of you. The next item #7 concerns election of auditor. Based on a recommendation from the Audit Committee, the Board has proposed reelection of EY Godkendt Revisionspartnerselskab as the company's financial and sustainability auditor for the financial year 2026. And the Board proposes that EY's tasks include providing a statement on the sustainability reporting in the management report and the annual report as applicable. And I have been informed by the Board and Pandora that the Audit Committee has not been influenced by third parties and has not been subject to any agreement with third parties, which limits the general meeting in election of certain auditors or audit firms. Any questions or comments for election of auditor? Then I conclude the shareholders have approved the Board's proposal to reelect EY and move on to the next agenda item, resolution on the discharge of liability. Item #8. And just to be clear, this matter only concerns, matters that have been disclosed in the annual report or at this general meeting. Any questions or comments regarding discharge of liability? That does not seem to be the case. I consider then the general meeting to have granted discharge to the Board and to executive management. Thank you. Now I move to Item #9. And as said in the beginning, we have 4 proposals here, all by the Board. There have been no shareholder proposals this year. Item 9.1 concerns a proposal to reduce the company's share capital by a nominal amount of 4 million shares, equal to 5.05% of the company's total share capital. And according to practice by the Danish Business Authority, the cancellation of treasury shares after a buyback is compared to a capital reduction by distribution to the shareholders. So in advance of this meeting, the Board has stated that the treasury shares have been acquired in the period between 30th December '24 and 25th of November '25 for a total amount of DKK 4,061,177,430. Any questions or comments for the proposal to reduce the share capital with the treasury shares? That was not the case, then I consider the Board's proposal adopted by the general meeting. And as a result of this proposal and adoption, we will amend the Articles of Association to reflect the new share capital of DKK 75 million. However, before this implementation, we have to wait for 4 weeks, during which a notice will be made through the Danish Business Authority's IT system. This is a technical procedure, and we will complete it once the period has lapsed. Next on the agenda, Item 9.2 regarding authorization to the Board to let the company buy back own shares. The proposal is to allow the Board to buy back own shares in the period until March 11, 2031. The limits are that Pandora may acquire own shares up to an aggregate nominal value of 10% of the company's share capital, provided that the holding of treasury shares does not at any time, exceed those 10%. And the purchase price paid in connection with acquisition of own shares must not change from the price quoted on the regulated market where the purchase is carried out by more than 10%. Any questions or comments for this proposal? Then I will consider the general meeting to have approved this also. Thank you for that. Item 9.3 concerns a proposal to amend Article 7.3 of the Articles of Association. The capital region of Denmark will merge with the region of Zealand with effect from 1st of January 2027 and turn into the region of Eastern Denmark. Now why am I telling you this? I am because the wording in Article 7.3 of the Articles of Association where -- stating where physical general meetings must take place need to change due to that merger. And we propose -- the Board proposes to change Article 7.3 to state that physical general meetings shall be held at the registered office of the company or at another place in the Greater Copenhagen area. The remaining part of Article 7.3 is unchanged. So this is only the geographical reference that we change. And because the Articles of Association, it's the Danish version that is the governing version, I will briefly say in Danish that the new wording of Article 7.3 is proposed to state that [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] This is just a Danish version, she now reads out. Any questions or comments for this proposal? Also mere technical issue. I consider this adopted also by the meeting. Thank you for that. And then the final agenda item is 9.4 authorization to me as Chair of the meeting to be able to register the decisions that you have made here today and make any necessary registrations, I will, of course, only file whatever you have decided and not on my own, make any changes to the Articles of Association. Any questions or comments for this item? Then I thank you for the authorization to do so. Now the final, any other comments, agenda item. All proposals and items for this meeting have now been dealt with, and I would like to open the floor for any further comments or questions at this point to be addressed here at the general meeting. I will note that it is not possible to present any proposals for adoption at this point, but any further comments are welcome.

[Interpreted] For a number of years, I've participated in this AGM, and it's also always very interesting. And I'm sure that many of our other shareholders would also be happy to participate. And therefore, I think you should hold your AGM at Radisson Blu, the hotel so that there is a good parking facilities, and it should be at 4:00 or 5:00 o'clock in the afternoon so that it's shareholder friendly. The more shareholders that can get the information that we get on a day-to-day, the better and the more likely it is that more people will buy the share. Pandora is one of the most underestimated companies in the C25 index. Even though the share price has fallen by 60%, the company still generate 23% to 24% of its turnover in net turnover, net revenue. Very few companies can achieve that and also the big French and Swiss luxury goods companies can't perform that well because they are so dependent on China, in Pandora, we are not very dependent on China, and therefore, we have performed far better than Louis Vuitton and all of the other French and Swiss luxury goods giants. Some of them -- most of them are quite a lot bigger than Pandora, but they can't deliver the same good results. They are much more expensive in price earnings. We are much more dependent on Europe and the U.S., whereas they depend on China. Therefore, I think it would be better if we were 500 participants at Radisson Blu at 4:00 or 5:00 o'clock. So -- and I also think that with 42,000 employees, the size of this company could also justify that you would present us with a nice buffet. I think you have 42,000 employees that you serve lunch to. I think you could serve lunch to your shareholders at one of the good hotels in Copenhagen. Thank you very much.

Thank you for that. Board has informed me they will consider your comments. Thank you. Any further comments at this point? That does not seem to be the case. Then I would like to thank the Board and management of Pandora and all of the participating shareholders also online for a good meeting. I close the formal part of the meeting and invite the Chair to give the final words. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Pernille. Before I formally close this AGM. I would like to express our big thanks to Christian for his very long period as Chair and his involvement in Pandora. He has been instrumental for Pandora's development over many, many years, and you will be missed, Christian. Thank you. And then a big thank you to all of you, shareholders, who attended this meeting today, and thank you for your engagement, your questions, your comments. We appreciate that. It's been a great pleasure to see you all, and I look forward to seeing you again here next year. So the only thing left for me to say is that the meeting is adjourned. So thank you all. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]