Rusta AB (publ) ($RUSTA)

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Cathrine Wigzell, and I'm the new CEO of Rusta. And it's great to be here together with our CFO, Sofie Malmunger, for the presentation of Rusta's year-end report '25-'26. I've just joined the organization, and it's full speed ahead from the start, and I can already say that this is truly a fantastic company and organization, and I look forward to continue driving Rusta's expansion in the low-price market. Today, however, we are here to present the fourth quarter and the full financial year '25-'26. I'm going to start with an update on the business and highlights from the fourth quarter and the financial year. Sofie will then take you through the financial performance in more detail, and we will conclude with some reflections on the outlook ahead before we open up for questions. All right, starting with the business update. Rusta delivered a solid fourth quarter with sales growth across all segments and improved profitability. We saw increased customer traffic and higher average tickets in all segments despite tough comparables with strong summer sales in April last year. We continued the rollout of our updated store concept, which improves efficiency and drive sales, supporting our like-for-like growth. We opened up 8 stores in total during the quarter, which is the highest quarterly pace ever, and we now have 41 stores in the pipeline, and I'm going to come back to this a bit later in the presentation. We managed to reach breakeven in the fourth quarter. This means that all 4 quarters in the financial year were profitable for the first time since Rusta was founded. And finally, the Board proposes a higher dividend of SEK 1.8 per share, up from SEK 1.45 last year and which corresponds to 50% of net profit for the year and is at the upper range of our dividend policy. Going into more detail on the fourth quarter, we continue to see solid sales growth of 5.8% and a like-for-like growth of 2.1%. Both figures are year-on-year and excluding currency effects. Norway saw the strongest performance in the quarter. And Sofie, you will come back to this later in the presentation. We welcomed more customers to our stores and the average ticket increased in all segments. We did a soft launch of Rusta Online in Germany in the end of the fourth quarter, testing systems, order flows and logistics. And this now means that we offer Rusta's e-commerce in all of our markets. If we turn to our margins, we managed to increase our gross margin by 1.4 percentage points to 42.3%. This was supported by a positive mix effect and also FX tailwind, which I know that Sofie will -- or that Sofie has guided before in these presentations. Again, it's worth noting that we managed to avoid a loss on EBITA level for the first time in Rusta's history. Turning to the full year '25-'26. As you can see in the figures to the right, last year was a solid year. We met tough comparables, but we are growing sales, both in total and like-for-like, and our EBITA margin reached 7.6%. We added in total 14 new stores during the year, and we've also added an additional 4 stores since the financial year ended. During the year, we also opened our bonded warehouse, which increases efficiency in the value chain and also strengthens our gross margin. We improved our cash flow from operating activities with an increase of SEK 540 million, reaching approximately SEK 1.7 billion for the full year. Earnings per share increased by 15.5% to SEK 3.6. Coming back to the store network expansion during the quarter, our big pipeline is now starting to materialize. We've been working in record pace with several exciting openings in line with our strategic priorities. During the spring, we opened a new store in Lidingö, and I had the opportunity to attend the store opening personally, and it was a great and really reassuring experience with a lot of happy customers. Lidingö is located near the inner city in Stockholm, and it represents a new type of location for Rusta, close to the city location. And this type of close to the city location remains untapped for Rusta to a large extent, and we see a lot of potential with these types of location in our future expansion. The picture in the middle is from the opening of our first ever inner city location in Helsinki, Finland. We are so excited to be reaching the inner city customers in Helsinki, and it also represents a very important step to further strengthen brand awareness of Rusta in the Finnish market. And lastly, our store opening on Åland. We've had interest from Åland locally to establish a store there for quite some time now, and we've been warmly welcomed since the opening in April. So if we take a closer look at the store network and our expansion plans, as I just mentioned, we're expanding in record pace, and we now have 243 stores in total. The pipeline of signed and approved locations is at 41 as of today. And we are confident with our guidance of 65 to 80 stores in the coming 3-year period. We have high expansion pace right now, as you know, and we see that our expansion potential grows as our brand strength and recognition increases in our markets. This makes it possible to open up stores in smaller cities than before, and the pace is supported by a softer real estate market, which makes it possible for us to access new locations on beneficial commercial terms. Our strong financial position also enables us to act strategically, but as always, our bar of entry remains high. I'd also like to mention the quality of the pipeline, which is very good and well in line with the average quality of our current like-for-like stores. A large share of the stores are either in capital regions or in or around the major cities, including Stockholm, Oslo, Gothenburg and Helsinki. So the pipeline is strong. A milestone that we have reached highlighted also before is the 7 million members in Club Rusta, which was reached in the fourth quarter. This demonstrates a strong underlying trend where we continue to recruit new customers into Rusta and into the low-price segment. Club Rusta members shop more frequently and they also spend more per purchase than customers who are not members of the loyalty program. And Club Rusta also provides us with insights and help us to understand our customers even better with several hundred million transactions to date. Great. I'm now going to hand over the word to Sofie to go through our financial performance in more detail.

Thank you, Cathrine. As Cathrine has just showed you, Rusta delivered a solid fourth quarter with profitable growth across all segments despite tough comparables and a later seasonal start. We have a total net sales growth of 4.9%. Excluding currency effects, sales increased by 5.8% and like-for-like growth, excluding currency effects, was 2.1%. The growth is driven by more customers and a higher average ticket across all segments. This is achieved despite strong comparables from last year and a late start of the spring season due to colder weather in April this year. Gross profit increased with 8.7% and the gross margin improved by 1.4 percentage points to 42.3%. This was driven by a favorable product mix, positive FX effects and efficiencies in our supply chain compared to last year, including efficiencies from the bonded warehouse implementation. As a reminder, the fourth quarter is seasonally our smallest quarter, but this year, EBITA improved to a breakeven. As Cathrine mentioned earlier, this means that all quarters for Rusta last year were profitable for the first time ever, a clear proof point of the scalability and resilience of our business model. If we move to the full year, we can summarize a strong performance with both growth and improved profitability. Net sales increased with SEK 768 million to SEK 12.6 billion, corresponding to a growth of 6.5% or 8%, excluding currency effects. Like-for-like growth, excluding currency effects, was 5%, showing continued strong development in our existing stores. Gross profit increased by 7.5% and gross margin strengthened to 43.5%. EBITA increased by 11.7% to SEK 953 million, corresponding to an EBITA margin of 7.6%. This means that we have increased our EBITA with SEK 100 million compared to last year. So overall, we have delivered a year with accelerated growth, improved profitability and with the growth and profitability in line with our midterm financial targets. Looking at the segments for the quarter, we see continued growth across all segments, although with different dynamics. Starting with Sweden, net sales increased by 4.2% and like-for-like growth of 0.9%. Despite strong comparables, we see a stable development with increasing customer traffic and improved conversion and profitability strengthened with an EBITA margin of 15.8%, up from 13.7% last year. In Norway, we saw the strongest performance in the quarter. Net sales growth, excluding currency effects, was 9% and like-for-like growth was 7.8% -- profitability also improved with an EBITA margin increasing to 3.9% compared to 3.6% last year. Customer sentiment remained positive during the quarter with customers increasingly purchasing higher ticket items. We also saw an earlier start of customers buying summer items in Norway compared to the Other markets. In our segment Other markets, we continue to see solid total growth driven by expansion and a growing online business with net sales growth of 6.9%, excluding currency effects. Like-for-like was negative at minus 1.2%, reflecting a strong comparable last year when the summer season started earlier due to warm weather in April. In the fourth quarter last year, Other markets grew 16.5% in total and 8.5% like-for-like, excluding currency effects. Profitability is below last year with an EBIT margin decrease of 2.1 percentage points in Q4. This is a direct result of our strategy to invest in price and in market position in markets where we are still building scale. It's also impacted by a weaker euro. Overall, we continue to drive growth and expansion in other markets, prioritizing long-term market share and scale over short-term profitability. Across the group, we continue to deliver growth despite very strong comparables with strong and improving profitability in our core markets, while progressively building scale and market position in Other markets. For the full year, we see a consistent picture across our segments. In Sweden, net sales increased by 8.8% and like-for-like growth was 4.3%. Profitability strengthened further with an EBITA margin of 19.1%, up from 18% last year. We continue to see strong customer demand in Sweden, which is our largest segment. In Norway, net sales growth, excluding currency effects, was 9.7% and like-for-like growth was 6.8%. The EBITA margin increased to 11.3% compared to 11.1% last year. We are pleased that Rusta continues to grow strongly in the Norwegian market with an increased profitability despite currency headwinds throughout the year. In Other markets, net sales growth, excluding currency effects, was 4%, while like-for-like growth was minus 0.6%. The difference is explained by continued expansion, particularly in Finland as well as a growing online business. For the full year, we are impacted by both a strong comparable with an early summer season last year and a later start this year. We also see negative currency effects from a weaker euro. Profitability decreased to an EBITA margin of 0.1% compared to 1.2% last year. This reflects continued investment in store expansions, price positioning and market development in these markets as well as some one-off effects from new store openings. At the same time, our KPIs clearly indicate that we are strengthening our position and continue to take market share. Overall, we continue to build scale and strengthen our long-term profitability potential in Other markets. Across the group, we see strong and profitable growth in our 2 largest segments while continuing to build scale and long-term profitability in our newer markets. If we look at the profitability drivers, they are very consistent with what we have communicated before. In the quarter, the improvement is driven by a favorable sales mix with a higher share of home decoration, positive cost effects in the supply chain where our bonded warehouse is a good example of how we have improved the cost efficiency and FX tailwind supporting the gross margin. The positive effect of a lower dollar is now affecting our gross margin in line with our previous guidance. For the full year, profitability is supported by higher sales volumes, strong price position and successful campaigns and continued scalability in our business model. At the same time, the currency had a total negative impact for the full year, mainly due to weaker sales currencies in NOK and euro, but we still managed to increase both the gross and the EBITA margin for the full year. Overall, this clearly illustrates the strength of our business model where growth translates into improved profit and profitability. Turning to cash flow and balance sheet. Cash flow from operating activities increased to approximately SEK 1.7 billion for the full year, driven by stronger operating profit and a disciplined working capital management despite continued expansion. This is an increase with SEK 540 million compared to last year. Net working capital is in line with last year despite our record high expansion with new store openings. The small increase is due to a planned inventory buildup to support our growth. At the same time, we maintain a very strong financial position. Net debt, excluding IFRS 16, is negative, meaning that we have a cash position of SEK 160 million when we end our financial year. So despite continued investments in new store and in supply chain, we have strengthened both the cash flow and the balance sheet and continue to have a strong financial position. Looking at our financial targets, we can conclude that we deliver in line with our midterm ambitions. We delivered around 8%, excluding currency effects. We have a like-for-like growth that is above 3%, and we have an EBITA margin of 7.6%, moving towards the target of around 8%. And importantly, earnings per share continue to grow faster than both sales and EBITA, which confirms the scalability of our business model. Finally, the Board proposes a dividend of SEK 1.80 per share, up from SEK 1.45 last year. This corresponds to approximately 50% of net profit, which is at the upper end of our dividend policy. We consider this a message of strength. It reflects our strong financial position with a solid balance sheet and no long-term bank loans, and it shows our ability to both invest in future growth and return capital to our shareholders. And with that, I hand over to Cathrine.

Thank you, Sofie. A few words on the outlook before we move over to the Q&A session. On a general level, I'd like to underline that Rusta's strategy remains unchanged. As CEO, my focus will be on driving expansion, which means increasing sales in existing stores and online as well as opening up new stores. And there is a lot of potential to reach even more customers through expansion and also to drive like-for-like growth through an even more attractive assortment and continuous concept improvements. We will continue to invest in the future, prioritize price leadership and keeping costs down through constant improvements of our value chain. When it comes to the situation in the Middle East from a Rusta perspective, we are seeing no direct impact in our income statement so far and the summer season supply is under control. This is still a highly developing situation, but Rusta has a long track record of mitigating risks and sudden events. Finishing off by looking at current trading, we see a stable sales development with continued gross margin growth in Q1. And with that, I would like to open up for the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Niklas Ekman from DNB Carnegie.

First, a question for Cathrine. Curious about your initial reflections here in your role as CEO. And I know you've only been CEO now for a little more than a week, but you've had a few months to get to know the business. And what I'm really curious about is what kind of your key priorities are going to be. What are you the -- we know there's a lot of strengths here with the Rusta concept. What do you see as the main weaknesses or main points that need to be addressed in your role as CEO?

Niklas, no, but I'm super happy to finally be on board. And as you said, I mean, Rusta is a great company, and it's really well run. So I would like to reiterate that Rusta's strategy remains unchanged. And I'm going to focus on continue to develop our like-for-like growth in the current stores as well as online, but also continue our expansion with new stores. And to be honest, I see a lot of potential throughout our value chain. But if I should mention then I would say that assortment, of course, that is our main function. That's what we do. I see that there's a lot of potential to develop our assortment even further, but also looking maybe even more customer-focused going into communications and also Club Rusta as you know, we met a big milestone landing on 7 million customers now in the quarter. And I think there's an enormous amount of potential in the insights that we can have from this customer club. So that is something that I would like to dig into even further. So if I should mention 2 things, I would say, assortment and communication and Club Rusta. And as you already know, I mean, Club Rusta members for us, they come more frequently and they shop more. So it's really valuable customers for us. So a lot of potential there, I would say.

Excellent. Very clear. And following up on that, if you look at your different country operations, obviously, you're doing very well in Sweden and Norway. Finland and Germany are still kind of unproven -- and if you look at Finland specifically, you have also as many stores as you do in Norway, but sales are still much lower. And put differently, sales per store in the others being 30% lower than what you're seeing in Sweden. Curious about your reflections about why this is and what are your key measures to try to catch up in Finland, particularly, but also Germany, of course, over time?

No, but I mean, if we zoom out, Finland is a part of our other markets, which is our smallest segment, less than 20% of our share of business today. Here, we're meeting high comparables, actually the highest comparables towards the last quarter in the previous year of over 16%. What we can see that there is a tougher macroeconomic situation, both in Germany and Finland and also a bit of a more negative customer sentiment. But I mean, we continue to follow our plan. We invest in our price position, and that has continued. We continue with our concept development of our stores, and we also open up new stores. So both Germany and Finland continue to be long-term strategically important growth markets for us.

And do you think that those 2 markets maybe need more local. Adaptation in order to be successful? Or are there other levers that need to be pulled to get those in line with Sweden and Norway?

No. But I think also, I mean, we need to focus also on getting up brand recognition because even though we have, as you said, around 50 stores in Finland and specifically, we have a lot to do when I think it comes to communication, but also local adaptations. But I think that goes for the full market. And for us, I mean, we are building a global business, which means that we want to keep our similarities and don't invest in complexity, rather the opposite. So it's always also important to make sure that we don't create overcomplexity and that we get the right measurements in place. But yes, I see that we have more potential in other markets.

Very clear. And then also just a question on your targets. You mentioned here your medium-term target of 8% organic growth and a margin of 8% medium term. These were targets that were set at the IPO 3 years ago. And at that point you said that the target was kind of 3 years out. Given that you are now towards kind of the end of this period, any reason you see to alter these targets? And then you're fairly close. I mean, you've delivered on the sales growth targets. You're fairly close on the margin target? Or you think that this is still very much valid if you look 3 years down the line?

I mean they're set on a 2- to 5-year basis, and they are well calibrated to our strategy and long-term growth potential. So the financial targets will remain.

The next question comes from Daniel Schmidt from Danske Bank.

Just following on maybe on the discussion on Finland or sort of Other markets where you are saying that you are going to prioritize long-term scale and over short-term profitability. And you also mentioned, Cathrine, that you might want to sort of invest a bit more in brand recognition in these markets. Should we expect or do you think that these markets will be continuously at breakeven for some time or even below that? Are you willing to invest even more going forward than what you have done? Or how do you calibrate that?

I would say that we are on that level now where we can continue to have good investments in the markets, and we are following our plan. So I wouldn't give any more projections around it.

I could add that, I mean, when it comes to the profitability for the Other markets this year, it's reflected by continued investment in new stores. And also, as we have mentioned, we are price investing in these markets to drive long-term profitability over short-term profitability or long-term growth actually. It is a tough market development in these markets, and we also have some one-off effects for -- from our store openings. So I'm not surprised by the profitability that we have for this year. Also, it's very much reflected on a weak euro for the full year.

Yes. Okay. And would you say that sort of in building brand recognition, especially maybe in the German market, does that include a bit more of a forward-leaning approach when it comes to opening stores in that market?

No. I mean we guide on the current network that we have. There is one store that will be opened now in half year 1, '27, and then we have 2 in the pipeline.

Yes. Okay. Okay. Good. And then maybe coming back to the gross margin, Sofie, would you dare to sort of break down this 1.4 percentage improvement that you had in the quarter? You mentioned supply chain efficiencies.

We have positive mix effect in the quarter from selling higher-margin products such as home decoration. We also have positive currency effects where we -- where the dollar is now positively affecting our purchase prices. We have also positive effects from, we say, the scalability in our supply chain where the bonded warehouse is a great example of how we improve the cost efficiency. So I would mention those 3 as the strongest positive growth drivers of the gross margin in the quarter.

But would you say that those are evenly divided contributors?

Sorry?

Evenly divided, if they're evenly divided.

Yes, quite evenly divided, yes.

And there's positive effect really from the Norwegian krona strengthening during the start of the year, that's going to come now basically.

Yes. So no positive effect of the NOK for the full financial year and no in Q4.

But as the start of Q1, you are seeing that?

Yes.

okay, together with the U.S. dollar continuously being a tailwind, I assume, since it's...

Yes, exactly -- the positive currency effect in our purchase prices will continue in the coming quarter.

Yes. Good. And then just maybe the store expansion. We know how many signed stores you have currently and that you've opened quite a few already in Q1 and that you will open quite a few in H1. Maybe I missed it, but would you care to give sort of a full year guidance on store openings for this new fiscal year?

Yes. No, but we estimate that around 20 stores for the full year.

The next question comes from Andreas Lundberg from SEB.

If I go back to Other markets again. How much do you think is -- I mean, the overall softer performance there versus other markets due to you being less known in the market over a weak macro economy in these markets?

I think it's very hard to tell. I mean what we can see is that it is a tougher macroeconomic situation, both in Germany and Finland and also a much weaker customer sentiment. But if we look at our KPIs for Finland, it's our view that we are taking market share in Finland.

Okay. Got you. And on store expansion in general, these 65 to 80 stores, how will you make sure that these are as profitable as the existing ones? Or put it in other words, for how long do you think you can expand your store network without diluting your profitability?

No. But what we can see is that the current pipeline of signed and approved stores are well in line with our like-for-like stores that we have already now. And I mean, we have a very high bar when it comes to signing new stores. It needs to be the right location and the right commercial terms. And I would also say, I mean, looking at competition, for example, in Finland and Norway, they have more than twice as many stores as we have. So there's definitely potential for us to grow even more.

When it comes to our stores, to open more stores is overall very positive for Rusta. Short term, it gives us slightly higher cost, which, of course, can be different between different markets or segments or quarters. But we have a very short payback time for opening new stores. So it's all positive.

And then a few financial questions. I mean the CapEx guide this year? And how do you see working capital moving in this fiscal year?

Was the question what the CapEx will be next year?

Yes, our guidance for CapEx.

Yes. We are, of course, then with the 41 stores in line, continuing to invest in our new stores and also in our warehouse with the last parts of the automization and other sort of investments in the warehouse. We believe that the investment will be somewhere around 3.5% to 4% in this financial year, which is then '26, '27.

That's cool. do you think you can keep the working capital ratios...

Yes, we believe that. We are at the same inventory level as a year ago despite opening 14 new stores and a large pipeline of new stores. So we have a very efficient working capital process.

And lastly, maybe for Cathrine here. You touched upon it a little bit, but what do you think will be the greatest difference if you look out 3 years from Rusta today?

Well, obviously, we will have continued to grow on all our markets. And I think continue developing our assortment, growing online and growing with new stores, but also prioritizing growth in our current stores. I think that's very important.

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

Okay. Thank you all for participating, and thank you for all the questions. With that, Sofie and myself would like to wish you all a great summer, and I hope to see you in our stores. Thank you.

Thank you.