Tokmanni Group Oyj (TOKMAN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and a warm welcome to Tokmanni Capital Markets Day 2024. My name is Mika Rautiainen, and I have to say I'm very proud that we're able to arrange this CMD in Moreeni, Tokmanni Group's brand new distribution center. This has been a fantastic project, so that's why it's really great that we are able to arrange it over here. Three years ago, we launched Tokmanni Strategy for the period, 2021 to 2025. The key message of this strategy period was strong growth. Now obviously, if you think about 3 years ago, the situation was quite a lot different. Today, market is different, business environment is different, new competitors, and Tokmanni Group as a company is quite different from 3 years ago. But the key message is still very valid, strong growth. Today, our target is to tell a little bit more about the strong growth. How are we going to continue until the end of the strategy period with strong growth? We will have some new roles, new tasks for different business units. And for that purpose, I have a fantastic team over here to be presenting also these new roles. So maybe a short introduction. Maybe, Janne, you will start.

Yes. Thank you, Mika, and good to be here. My name is Janne Pihkala. I'm responsible for our strategy, business development and e-commerce here at Tokmanni. Been with the company since 2018. Thank you.

My name is Anders Kind. I am the CEO of DollarStore. I have a quite long history in retail. I started my career in the Coop in the 90s. Worked there for 10 years. And then I went to ICA, not IKEA, but ICA, also the biggest food retailer in Scandinavia, I think it is, for 5 years. And last not least, I was in Rusta for 10 years, joined on their strong growth during the last few years. And about 1 year ago, I started as the CEO for DollarStore.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Sirpa Huuskonen, and I lead People, Culture, and Sustainability in Tokmanni. I've been in the management team for nearly 8 years now.

Good afternoon, everybody. I think I know most of you. Tapio Arimo is my name and I've been the CFO of Tokmanni since fall 2022 and I'm also responsible for IT and indirect sourcing.

Thank you. So maybe Janne, you will stay over here with me. I'll quickly go through the agenda for this afternoon. First of all, Janne has done a great deep dive on the discount retail market, so we'll hear his views regarding the development of the discount retail market. Then I mentioned that we have for these business units, we do have a little bit different roles also in building up the strong growth. So we will be telling you about the role for Tokmanni Group, then Tokmanni Finland, and of course, DollarStore Sweden and Denmark. And in between, of course, something which is for our customers today, an extremely important issue is sustainability, and Sirpa will be coming to tell more about the sustainability with Tokmanni Group. And of course, last but not least, the strategic targets for Tokmanni Group. So Tapio will come and tell you more about the strategic targets, which we actually launched this morning and some financials like the guidance and pre-info regarding 2023. And after this presentation, we will have like a 10-minute break, some place in between. And then after the presentations, we'll have time for questions and answers. And you may basically submit your questions via chat or then the Teams link for CMD occasion. Yes, link exactly. So this is the agenda, and let's start, Janne. And it's you first, please.

I'm going to talk about variety discount retailing. I'm going to talk about the market. I'm going to talk about the essence of variety discount retailing and I'm going to talk about the key trends. And some of this is something that repeats a bit what we discussed 3 years ago. But I think it's -- that those things are still valid, so it's good to repeat them once in a while. To begin, as you may know, the market environment has been extremely volatile and uncertain in recent years. I can't remember even in history books that we would have had similar type of environment present in the past. To begin, we had COVID-19 pandemic. Then we had inflation. Then we had this fluctuations in supply in terms of prices and demand -- delivery lead times. As you may know, COVID-19 restrictions were actually quite good for retailers, when the restrictions came you weren't allowed to travel, you weren't allowed to go to restaurants or almost anywhere. So what did you do? You went to buy product and that was really good for us. But then again, when the restrictions were lifted, the demand went down quite suddenly. And then that, of course, left us or all retailers, a lot of inventory at that time. Then at the same time, the inflation level started to go up. Of course, that meant that we had to increase prices when the purchasing prices went up. And now with us, I mean, all retailers. And due to that, the demand, of course, went down and consumer purchasing power went down and the expenses went up. And then again, supply chain during the COVID, there was a high demand. Pricing after COVID -- there was low demand, prices went down. And now again, the Red Sea situation fluctuating the price and delivery lead time, so very turbulent markets overall. But then if you look at the variety discount retailing, if you look at these figures that I have picked from the publications or company annual reports and so forth, we can actually see that we are not doing that badly in this type of market environment. And the conclusion is that actually variety discount retailing as a segment is quite resilient for this type of market turbulence. And then so we are doing pretty well. If you look at the peer group average, there is 11% yearly growth. So not bad, not bad. And further, we have said this before, and we are going to say it again, discount is place to be in a market segment wise. So it's the fastest-growing physical channel today and will be in the future and this is not my opinion. This is the opinion of independent research companies. Just to keep in mind. Okay. Then what is this magical variety discount retailing, if you look in the segment. And this is something we have presented 3 years ago, but it's good to go through this once more so that you get the understanding on difference of department store, nonfood retailer or specialty retailer compared to variety discount retail and what it's all about. So to start with, a variety discount retailers always have this type of top-of-mind category. For us, Tokmanni, it could be cleaning. We are very strong there. For DollarStore, it's party. But every variety discount retailer has this type of destination, top-of-mind categories in their concept. Then again, there is typically strong focus in private labels and exclusive products. So products you cannot buy anywhere else. Then but not least, the price, low price, every variety discount retailer aims to be the lowest on the market. Of course, it's impossible to be lowest for every product every time and so forth. But we really do and go extra mile to ensure the lowest prices. To give you an example, at Tokmanni, we use promotions a lot. We have weekly campaigns, where we try to ensure that for those products, we have the lowest price on the market. For DollarStore, it's fixed price points and everyday low price strategy. Then moving forward. And finally, it's not all about assortment and price. There is also this kind of fun factor embedded in everywhere at the discount retail concept. It can be that you have so unbeatable prices that it surprises you. It can be products that you are like -- what is this that surprise you. Also, it can be that every visit you make to the variety discount retailer is different and it can be this kind of treasure hunting feeling that you get from your visit. But there needs to be this kind of exciting fun factor embedded. And if these elements are present, then we can talk about or call you a variety discount retailer, instead of department store. And one notion is that each concept, each variety discount retail concept execute these elements in their own unique way. But yes, this is just to give you an example that what does it mean to be in variety discount retail segment and what it requires from you. Then I'm going to talk about a bit market trends in variety discount retail segment. To start, I can say that we presented these trends already in 2021. And the thing is that these trends haven't changed at all. They are still the same. The only thing is that they have gotten stronger, much stronger in this current environment we are. So to begin, so low prices that have boosted the sales for variety discount retailers. In this market environment, low prices are extremely important. So whoever has the lowest prices will grow and this hasn't changed anywhere. Then moving forward, unbeatable prices. Nowadays, we see a market where everybody wants to be a discounter. Everybody says that, "Hey, we have the lowest prices." So what this means is that variety discount retailers who need to own the price actually need to really force to have the lowest prices in every product they want to compete with. Then moving forward, yes, we, as a variety discount retailer are all still looking where to expand our offering to improve this one-stop shopping experience and to take away customers from our competitors. So this is one of the key reasons that we are able to gain market shares through expanding our assortments in selected categories. Food category security example, as I don't know how familiar you are with the U.S. market, but we have these Dollar stores there that have started to take fresh food in their assortment, like Dollar General, Dollar Tree, even Five Below in some extent. And they are saying that, "Hey, we want those food customers. Customers who buy food to us to visit our stores," and this is what's happening there. And moving forward, private labels. This actually go hand-in-hand with the assortment expansion in a sense that introducing new private labels actually support that quite well. And this is also a trend that hasn't gone anywhere. Instead, it has gotten stronger. Then e-commerce. Back in 2021, this was really booming when the COVID was on and the demand was high. I would still say that variety discount retailers are looking at this channel pretty carefully. But the thing is that we, as a variety discount retailers are still looking to make it profitably. So the essence is that how to make e-commerce profitably. Then digitalization megatrend, also in variety discount retailing. And yes, the thing is that in variety discount retailing, we are looking ways to improve our efficiency. And of course, customer data is in the core of that. And maybe the latest add-on to this is the AI. So according to our research, every variety retailer is exploring opportunities in AI and looking ways to improve their efficiency with it. Then being part of the community hasn't gone anywhere. The trend is still very strong. This is people business, and customers are the most important people for us, so we want to be part of their everyday life. And given our segment that we provide products they need with lowest prices they need. It's very convenient for us to be that partner for them in their communities and support them in their everyday life. And finally, sustainability. Back in 2021, we said that we are going to catch up with the sustainability with other retailers or the variety discount retail segment is going to catch up. Nowadays, we can already say that we are there. We have catched up with others. And now it's more that we will continue to invest in sustainability as other retailers are doing. So to conclude, key takeaways I would like you to keep with you regarding variety discount retail market is that we can grow profitably even in challenging market conditions. Variety discount retailing is all about low prices, fun and exciting shopping experience and top-of-mind categories. And these key trends, I just went through, they haven't gone anywhere. They are just getting stronger. Thank you.

Thank you, Janne. And yes, basically, so this is the segment where we are operating. And we say that Tokmanni Group's focus is on strong growth. So it's good to understand like, okay, what kind of environment, what kind of trends are in the discounter segment where we are supposed to build strong growth. But as already mentioned in the beginning, there are like different roles for different business units for Tokmanni Group nowadays. And we'll start with that, the growth journey ahead of us. And we'll start with Tokmanni Group. Well, most of you know that actually acquisitions have been a very central part of Tokmanni Group's history. During the last 20 years, it's almost 20 acquisitions that we've been doing in Finland. And basically, it means that Tokmanni Group has been consolidating the Finnish discounter market quite a lot. All these almost 20 acquisitions that we've done, obviously, we've learned quite a lot about it, a lot from there. Actually, we have been developing quite unique operating model for this kind of smooth integration of new retailers to Tokmanni Group's operations. Some highlights. At the moment, Tokmanni Group can operate any retail space between 200 square meters up to 10,000 square meters and even bigger stores profitably. And also when it comes to the location, we are doing profitable business in -- whether it's in the center of Helsinki, within, very city center actually. Or whether it's like a shopping mall in the small towns or even a store in small villages like Pihtipudas with population of 3,800. And we're able to basically operate profitably in all these locations. So actually, Tokmanni Group can acquire almost any retailer and operate its retail space profitably today. This is what we've gained and learned after these almost 20 acquisitions during the last 20 years. But not that I would be only telling this, Janne, you could actually give a short case example like what -- how about -- how does one of these acquisitions look like after a couple of years. Please, go ahead.

Yes. Thank you, Mika. So yes, let's take an example to showcase what we actually mean with this. So here is Ale-Makasiini, a Finnish discounter, that we acquired in 2018. And I'm going to briefly describe what we have here in the slide. 2017 is the situation prior acquisition. 2018 is the year of acquisition and 2019 is the year when Tokmanni Group invested and changed the operations of Ale-Makasiini. And one noteworthy thing is that after 2018, there is only 8 stores left generating those sales pillars and EBITDA pillars. While in 2017, there were actually 9 stores. So despite the fact that we have lost one store, we have this -- still this type of figures that we have been able to increase the same-store sales over 50% for those stores and EBITDA more than 300% for the same stores. And these are the capabilities we have at Tokmanni Group that we now utilize for Ale-Makasiini case. And this yields a payback time for the acquisition of approximately 2 years. Just to give you an example. Thank you.

Not a bad example. Thank you, Janne. So this is the training that we've done in Finland. Last summer, we took the step -- the international step spreading the discounter idea while acquiring DollarStore from Sweden. And now it's actually 6.5 months time after the acquisition. And basically, based on all those experiences that we had from the Finnish acquisitions, now we've been leveraging these capabilities together with DollarStore. And obviously, DollarStore is a fantastic discounter concept as basically several Swedish retail concepts are extremely good. Actually, they're world-class concepts and operating globally. We consider DollarStore a fantastic example as well on the Swedish retail know-how. But luckily enough, the DollarStore concept together with DollarStore, we have a lot of similarities, which basically means that we are able to get a lot of synergies with buying and sourcing. We actually informed that the net synergies, we target EUR 15 million during the first 30 months. We will be sharing a little bit more information about the synergies in our fourth quarter report in the end of March, but already now I can say that the synergies looks very, very promising. And it's not only synergies, it's also about sharing the best practices. Maybe, Anders, maybe you could join me a little bit because like I'm only saying some good things. Maybe you can say whether it's true. But anyway, the best practices, if we're talking about that, as mentioned, the concept know-how with DollarStore is really great, and we have already been adopting some very good things from you. And at the same time, We, in Tokmanni, we actually work quite hard with this one, with this Moreeni, the distribution center. We had to plan the discounter extremely efficient supply chain while preparing this DC. And I could imagine that we could support, again, DollarStore, whether it's in Sweden or in Denmark when it comes to supply chain. But there are a lot of things that we are able to just share with each other. Of course, it's all about the resources when it comes to finance, sustainability, marketing and so on. But a couple of words from you, like how does it feel after 6.5 months time.

How does it feel after 6.5 months? A very good question. No, it's not only a word from Janne or from Mika, but I must say this is a very professional, the acquisition. You can tell that you have done it in the past and you've done it in a very good way. So what you do, we try to align with the goals from the beginning. So I think you were very smart, you were not saying we are going to do it in this way. We align from the beginning to discuss what is the goal. And then we discussed also how to -- the method how we will fulfill them. And we are right now, as you said, in the fulfillment of the goals. So I think it's been very smart, and we feel very dedicated. All of DollarStore is very dedicated to fulfill the goals. So we didn't have -- you can expect that there would be tensions. But so far, so good, we have been -- have had very good collaboration. So it looks very promising.

Especially with this sharing of resources, what we're coming after that. Now we've been talking about acquisitions. But obviously, that's not the only way to grow. We're obviously accelerating the new store openings. And of course, for this purpose, we also need to share the resources and as we informed this morning, Tokmanni Group will target to open at least 20 new -- 25 new stores under Tokmanni, DollarStore BigDollar brand by the end of next year. To this year, by the end of 2024, the target is to open 6 new stores in Sweden DollarStore, 4 new BigDollar in Denmark and 4 new Tokmanni in Finland. How do you see? Well, it's actually DollarStore is the spearhead of the expansion for Tokmanni Group, so how do you see the Swedish and Danish market? Is there a space for?

Absolutely. So I'm very grateful that you say that we are the spearhead. We think that ourselves that we have a big, huge potential still in Sweden. We think that we can grow quite much in Sweden. But of course, Denmark, it's just 1 year since we opened up the first store, and we have 4 now, and we say that we are on the right track, so we will open 4 new. Maybe it's a little bit too early to say that we've cracked the code because it's a big, what we say, challenge. But also, again, so far, we have done very good. It's a very good start in Denmark, I must say. So we will continue.

And with your presentation, you will share some more light with Swedish and Danish market.

Yes. So I will definitely do that.

Very good. But obviously, with these 14 new stores that we're building this year, we're obviously trying to develop so-called factory for new store openings so that we can speed it up a lot with expanding the store network.

Absolutely.

Yes, thank you. So our long-term vision is to become the leading discount retailer in Northern Europe. This is what we're working for very hard. And coming back to the -- well, actually, why we want to do this growth? Janne, you've picked up a slide with some world-class discounters. Could you please explain this a little bit closer, like what exactly do you mean with this chart?

Yes, definitely, Mika. Thank you. And yes, I think we have had this slide before. It's a slide with a lot of information. And what we want to tell with this slide is that if we keep up with the peer group, we can reach our vision. And also, we want to say that after we have reached EUR 1 billion in revenue, if you look at the slide and graph, you can see that the second billion is coming much faster, the third even faster, even faster. So it's an exponential curve. And we believe that we can keep up with our peers in this revenue growth. So that's the key point of this slide.

Yes. Of course, it looks good and the players are something where we can learn, again, a lot. Thank you. So as a conclusion, already mentioned several times, we are aiming for strong growth. And the roles go like this, the Tokmanni Group is responsible for acquisitions. We have a proven track record with acquisitions. We've been training in Finland and now we're doing the international step so far, so good, as Anders mentioned. And of course, we constantly screen markets for new potential acquisitions in Northern Europe. But that's, of course, one part of the strong growth and then Tokmanni Finland, and then DollarStore in Sweden and in Denmark, they are responsible for like-for-like growth and new store openings. And as mentioned already, DollarStore is the spearhead of the expansion. Tokmanni Group will do its utmost to support DollarStore's strong growth in current and potential new markets. When it comes to Tokmanni Finland, the growth path comes, yes, of course, from some store openings. But at the moment, we have 201 Tokmanni stores in Finland. And we have said that it's approximately 220 stores that can be fit in Finland. So the focus for Tokmanni Finland is in destination categories and satisfied customers and like-for-like sales growth. And of course, in addition to all of these, we will explore opportunities to expand Click Shoes or Miny in the current or new markets. But of course, that's clearly a smaller business. But still, you could say that the international growth story has just begun. A couple of words, one more time regarding the role of Tokmanni Group. So this is the group at the moment. It's a family of different discount retail concepts and this is, of course, something we're interested all the time, how to develop these current concepts, how to maybe add new concepts, discount concepts in the family. And we were already also talking about sharing the resources. So the role of Tokmanni Group is to provide best possible support for own discount retail concepts. When it comes to people, sustainability, buying and sourcing, data, analytics, AI, supply chain, logistics and of course, finance as well. And based on the 6.5 months time together with DollarStore, we've already had some very good experiences, very good actually results from this one. So the Tokmanni Group will increase shareholder value by enabling faster and more profitable growth of these own discount retail concepts. First of all, we can focus growth investments to best performing assets and markets. And as basically at the moment, Sweden, Denmark, extremely interesting markets for DollarStore and BigDollar, the banner in Denmark. And of course, we are able to fast track the profitability of the acquired companies with our existing capabilities. Of course, we can also leverage acquired capabilities to the entire group. And here, I could actually pick up an example from Click Shoes that we actually bought approximately 1 year ago. The idea why to buy Click Shoes, the shoe store chain, was basically to strengthen the destination category for Tokmanni, which is apparel. And Click Shoes is basically the market leader in Finland as a shoe store chain. They have fantastic capabilities, very profitable, and we could directly copy a lot of things for Tokmanni and actually improve the profitability for the apparel destination category in Tokmanni, just as an example. And of course, since in discount business, we do have the same culture, same kind of ideas of the business. Same kind of offering -- same kind of idea of offering the assortment and the lowest prices for customers. So it's actually surprisingly easy to get along together and build up the business together with other companies like, for example, here with DollarStore. So we want you to think Tokmanni Group as a platform where we can provide best possible support for the owned retail concepts and where we can add new discount retail concepts and fast track their growth and profitability. So this is -- this was for the Tokmanni Group. And I think next, we could actually touch sustainability because at the moment, it's quite a lot on customers' table and customers' agenda, and we have been doing quite a lot with it. So Sirpa, please, tell us something about the sustainability with Tokmanni Group, please?

With pleasure. Thank you, Mika. So let's talk a while about sustainability in Tokmanni Group. Our ambition is to be the leader in sustainability in Northern Europe's variety discount retail segment. We have had and we have an ambitious sustainability agenda, and we have made significant progress over the past 3 years in Tokmanni, Finland. We have 4 focus areas in our strategy. First of all, of course, products and sourcing. We want to offer our customers sustainable and traceable products. 98% of the factories directly buy our products in high-risk countries were BSCI audited in 2022. I'm sorry, I can't give you the 2023 numbers because we are at the moment in the process of doing our sustainability report. And this 2023 numbers will come out in April. Our second focus area is client. Our target is to be carbon neutral in our own operations in 2025. At the end of 2022, emissions from our own operations were decreased by 78% compared to the baseline we counted in 2025. When we talk about climate, you might be interested to know that on top of this Moreeni warehouse, we have the largest solar power plant installed in the roof in Finland. There's 4,050 solar panels on top of this house and they produce about more than 30% of the energy consumption of this warehouse. At the moment, Tokmanni has 61 solar power plants, which produce about 10% of our own energy consumption. Our third focus area is people. We are saying that Tokmanni is for everybody. That means that Tokmanni is open to all customers and to all employees. We respect human rights in all of our activities and we foster diversity, equality and inclusion among our employees. And our fourth focus area in our strategic business integrity. We want to be a trusted partner in the market. We want to be responsible and we expect the same from our partners. We are fully aware that the upcoming regulation will revolutionize the corporate responsibility activities, especially in the big companies. We need to thoroughly understand the impacts of our business to the whole value chain. This will eventually need some changes to the current ways of work. And because of the CSRD Regulation, we need to communicate and report transparently to our stakeholders about our sustainability work and about the impacts of our business. At the moment, we are in the middle of transition, the acquired businesses like DollarStore, BigDollar, Click Shoes with the Tokmanni Group sustainability agenda. Last year, we trained DollarStore employees to our code of conduct rules and processes and we have made our 2024 sustainability agenda together with the DollarStore employees. To conclude, I'd like to say that we have made significant progress in sustainability over the past 3 years in Tokmanni Finland, and we have achieved good results. At the same time, we realize that there will be a lot of new regulations and new laws coming up. We want to be ready and turn this into our competitive advantage. It is very important for us to be able to provide our customers sustainable products with low prices. That is our target also in the future. So therefore, we will have an ambitious sustainability agenda with clear targets also in the future, but the new agenda will cover the whole Tokmanni Group. Thank you.

Thank you, Sirpa. Yes, ambitious targets, but we could already say that impressive achievements as well.

Yes. During the past 3 years, yes, yes.

Very good.

Thank you.

So until now, we've been talking mainly about strong growth and how Tokmanni Group is building that or participating in building the strong growth. Next thing is that we start with Tokmanni Finland, then comes DollarStore. But before that, we'll take a 10-minute break. Thank you. So we'll continue in 10 minutes' time. Thank you. [Break]

Welcome back. The first part of the Capital Markets Day was quite a lot about Tokmanni Group. The second part will be Tokmanni Finland, DollarStore Sweden, and Denmark, and about the roles of these 2 business units, how they are driving the strong growth for the Group. About the Tokmanni strategy update, this is where we came actually 3 years ago when we launched the strategy. It was already that time about continuous growth. Strategy for Tokmanni Finland is still very valid. The focus is at the moment on execution. We said 3 years ago that we have very, very clear actions to improve customer confidence and engagement. And that's the way to drive the like-for-like business growth. These actions are widest possible assortment, lowest possible prices, fast and easy to shop, personal and exciting shopping experience, friendly and knowledgeable personnel and sustainable choice. These are still very valid with driving the customer confidence and like-for-like growth. But let's have like a short look like, okay, what's happened during the last 3 years with this. We said that we will double the Tokmanni assortment during the strategy period. We said that we will be expanding current destination categories. Well, basically, Click Shoes is one example of expanding the assortment of Tokmanni apparel. We said that we will introduce new destination categories where Miny is actually a very good destination category, very successful destination category for Tokmanni. And we said that we will be introducing new private label ranges. Pisara, Parco, Arki 360, Catmandoo, and 2Moons are all very successful private labels. Pisara, Parco, Arki 360 are something that we developed ourselves. Catmandoo, we actually bought last year and 2Moons came together with Click Shoes. With the lowest possible prices, Janne actually mentioned already several times the lowest possible price level. It's our mission to provide our customers the lowest possible price level. That's in the DNA of a discounter. So we're doing at the moment our utmost with basically all the ways there are to give customers the lowest possible price level. When it comes to the entry-level products with private levels with A-brands and campaigns. Actually, at the moment, we're even giving our club members, this week, by the way, I know that you all are Tokmanni club members, so please benefit from the 10% discount in Tokmanni stores. Obviously, that has something to do with the Finnish market. As you probably all know, there is quite a lot of things happening and quite a lot of discounts and bonuses on their way with -- also with some competitors, so we're part of that business as well. Fast and easy to shop. We said we will be improving the omnichannel retailing at the moment. It's actually Tokmanni online business during the last 3 years, it didn't make any drop actually. It didn't grow at all, but the online business didn't drop at all. It stayed the same for 3 years. And at the moment, we can see that online business is growing very well, again after a couple of years of staying in the same level. And we're developing click-and-collect. It's on its way this year. 3 years ago, we said that we will open a new large store concept. And today, we have actually 2 of these large stores. In Tornio, we have over 10,000 square meters. In Hämeenlinna, I believe, if I remember correctly, it's more than 8,000 square meters. By the way, the Hämeenlinna store, when we opened it in the end of last year, it was the all-time high opening sales for Tokmanni store. So this is, of course, very, very interesting, and it was very interesting, a very successful start for that store. And we said that there's over 220 stores nationwide to serve Tokmanni customers. By the end of this year, there will be 205 stores. So we definitely need to speed it up. But as during the break, we had a short discussion about this. So we actually -- we know exactly where these 220 stores are being located. At the moment in Finland, the higher interest is doing the real estate investing a little bit slow. So that's why we're -- it's not actually going so fast, the 220 Tokmanni stores in Finland, but we basically believe that at least by the end of 2026, we will have 220 Tokmanni stores. But as already mentioned, due to the high interest, it's a little bit slower market, and that's why we have to take that consideration. As a discounter, we're never able to pay too much rent for our store sites. Personal and exciting shopping experience we said that we will be launching the customer loyalty program. We launched it in 2021. Today, Tokmanni club has 3.3 million members. Yes, 3.3 million members. Could imagine that this is almost like a world record with members. And this year, we will, of course, introduce personalized offers and benefits for the club members. Tokmanni app was also launched. We have today close to 400,000 app users. We said that we will be strengthening the business-to-business offer. So we launched a new concept, Tokmanni Tukku, meaning Tokmanni wholesale, last year, it's developing well. New products and bargains during every visit. I have to say that here, we took a little bit of a setback. That was due to the high inventories last year. The situation is now corrected. The inventories are on a very healthy level, and we can go back to where a discounter should be, meaning offering customers interesting and exciting new products. So it's like a restart with healthy inventories. And then friendly and knowledgeable personnel. Our target has been all the time this to be the best place to work in retail in Finland. With leadership, it means that -- actually, Tokmanni's leadership index in Finland is better than the index, the average index for Finnish retail sector. In Finland, we have 4,000 -- approximately 4,200 employees. 76% of these employees were participating at least one training last year. We launched a new compensation model by the end of last year as well. Regarding well-being, the sick leave percentage is something I'm very happy about because it's like clearly lower, 4.65%. Compared to retail business, in total, this is a very good figure. And of course, the injury rate also coming down. It's really important for the people business. And basically, when it comes to company culture, it's all employees committed with Tokmanni values, principles and way of working. Sustainable choice. Sirpa actually already went through the developments regarding our sustainability. So I won't be coming back to this. Obviously, now it's Tokmanni group level, but of course, Tokmanni Finland is here developing the sustainable part of the business. It's not only the customer confidence and the like-for-like growth for a discounter, everything is also about everyday low cost. Janne, would you like to tell a little bit more about improving the efficiency with Tokmanni Finland. Please go ahead.

Yes, definitely, Mika. Thank you. So going to the inner circle in a sense to actions to improve efficiency, and this is also something we have discussed in 2021. To start with, we cannot emphasize too much the everyday low-cost culture in Tokmanni Group and every company belonging to the group. So everyday low cost is a mental state to kind of get rid of all the unnecessary costs to bring up efficiency. Then, if you look at the topics, sourcing and buying, supply chain and digitalization. We can start with sourcing and buying that where we stated that we are going to increase direct sourcing, we are going to increase our private labels and especially share of sales on those. So here is where we are at those at the moment. So we have had increase in both. For sourcing, it has been 0.5 percentage points; and for private labels, it has been 4.2 percentage points. But please keep in mind that at the same time, our revenue has increased. So the total amount there in each of these is, of course, much higher when you take the growth also into account in euro-wise, I mean. Then if we look at the supply chain part, we have said that we are going to improve our forecast capabilities and also introduce a new warehouse solution. We are actually now in the new warehouse solution. So it's this Moreeni warehouse and it's proceeding as planned. Very good project management, very good execution. And because of that, we can get rid of all our external warehouses, making us more efficient and saving us costs. And regarding the forecasting capabilities, we are currently developing those. With all the emerging capabilities with AI and advanced analytics, we feel that now is the right time to renew those capabilities. And that should also improve our efficiency quite a lot. Then finally, the digitalization part. We have been doing a lot with this part. To start with, we have started to utilize analytics in different areas like assortment optimization, price optimization and personalization. We have also started to explore opportunities in digital in-store solutions like electronic displays and so forth that we are going to pilot this year. And finally, but not definitely least, we have started to utilize AI in our operations. There is an example that we have Tokmanni-wide ChatGPT solution in use and what we have started to onboard our people with, to bring up efficiency in all our operations. Thank you, Mika.

Thanks, Janne. So in Finland, the customer, the consumer sentiment hasn't been that positive during the last couple of years and that, of course, has an effect on the business. But still, the Tokmanni strategy, very valid with building the growth. So the execution of this strategy continues. We feel that we're doing exactly the right things. And finally, when the consumer sentiment gets a little bit better, we will be succeeding very well. And the target is to achieve strong like-for-like growth. That's the role for Tokmanni Finland, especially this like-for-like growth. And new capabilities included in Tokmanni's strategy will benefit Tokmanni Group going forward. So this was the Tokmanni Finland part. And then, Anders, the story of DollarStore, please.

The story of dollar store. Okay. Maybe we should need here 2 hours or something like that. I can talk for a very long time about DollarStore. But we can start with why I started to work for DollarStore, and that's about 1.5, 2 years ago, and I was contacted by the founder, Peter Ahlberg, at that time, and we had a coffee. And we were just discussing like everything and anything with DollarStore and low-price retailers and things like that. And you can say, we had kind of a bromance. We like found -- we saw -- I realized the potential of DollarStore, and that's how it started from me. And Peter, he was like -- he's very charismatic. He is very focused and very dedicated and what he learned me, 3 things about Dollar Store. And the first thing is customer in focus. So always think what the customer wants and satisfy that need, that's number one. And of course, everything about costs and things like that secondly, but customer in focus and keep the low price, don't leave that position. So that is like the entrance for DollarStore. And as a start, you can see we have had a very impressive journey or growth during the years. So we gained from small figures until last year, SEK 4.2 billion in a short time. We like doubled the digits every fourth or fifth year, going from SEK 2 billion to SEK 4 billion in less than 5 years, 4 years. Peter started in 1994. And at that time, he started purchase from Asia products and these so little retailers like the Coops or ICA or whoever, and he realized that I can also sell them in my own stores. So he opened in 1999, his first stores, and it's been a success story ever since. And just since 2013 until today's date, we have opened more than 100 stores. Saying this one, we have had -- as we've grown so much, we need to have a central warehouse. We opened that in 2021. And so we also will talk about in Denmark, we established there last year. Trying to explain the phenomenon of DollarStore. We are, as mentioned, and you will hear saying many times, low price. Saying this one, we can never ever leave that position. If we do somebody else, we'll take it and we're out of the market. So we need to satisfy the lowest price and also wide assortment. So when we open a store at this moment, we have about 11,000 SKUs when we open a store. And after a year, we have about 14,000, 15,000 SKUs in the stores. And then we think that, that then we satisfied quite a wide assortment and we can also make sure that we get big volumes on the product because what is that bring the lowest price? Volume extremely important for that. been a success story ever since. And just since 2013 until today's date, he's -- we have opened more than 100 stores. Saying this one, we have had -- as we've grown so much, you need to have a central warehouse. We opened that in 2021. And as we also will talk about in Denmark, we established there last year. trying to explain the phenomenon of dollar store. We are, as mentioned, and you will hear saying many times, low price, saying this one, we can never ever leave that position. If we do somebody else, we'll take it, and we're out of the market. So we need to satisfy the lowest price and also a wide assortment. So when we open a store at this moment, we have about 11,000 SKUs when we open a store. And after a year, we have about 14,000, 15,000 SKUs in the stores. And then we think that, that then we satisfied quite a wide assortment, and we can also make sure that we get big volumes on the product because what is that bring the lowest price volume, extremely important for that. And we said if we are like in food and beverage -- not the food, but snacks and beverage, I will say, we are a destination. We're a destination they come to shop all of this one. We are a destination also, as you said, Janne that's seasonal and party. When you should have a party wear on top of mind for customers and not to mention, Halloween. So we are a destination for Halloween party, for example, and we're trying that also now, for example, in Tokmanni. So this kind of all the -- we are kind of an amusement park in many areas. They come to get entertained. So it's not only about the assortment, they also choose between going to the movies that go to DollarStore. And as I mentioned, we try to be on top when they measure us. When they measure, they compare the price between the competitors, we try to be -- of course, we want to have the lowest prices, and that's extremely to -- and the customer should trust that we have it as well. What differs us from others on the market. Our concept is that we have always the lowest price. And saying this one, we don't change the prices each and every week. So in this one, all our competitors having this one each and every week, right, to attract the customer come to the stores. We haven't done that in the past. So we have always the lowest price to attract and we have in the past about 14 DR leaflets per year. So you ask me why I think that the DollarStore is a rough diamond that we can do everything better. Customers is coming anyway without an advertisement, and I think that if we add that, we will always keep the lowest price that they can trust us on that, but also add on that I need to go to DollarStore here, and now, we think that will attract even more customers. And if you look on the competition market in Sweden, it fears, not only in the low-priced retail segment, but all over. So I think that there is a tough market and we have ÖoB and we have Rusta. We have Jula. And from some perspective, the other ones: Jula and Clas Ohlson and Jysk as well. So it is a tough competition there on the low-price segment. But I think we have -- we think it's good. That makes us better. So for example, when we open new stores, with all this one around us, that's good for us. So we are not afraid of competition. Actually, we welcome it. And then we come to the performance. Janne told us that we are on the right spot so to say, the low-priced retail market. So from my perspective, there are 2 ways, either you should be on the high end, the fancy street with a fantastic high prices and things like that or you should be in our segment, good quality to the lowest price. And for me, at least, I think it's a risk to be in between. If you look on the one that's having problems on the market today is the one that a customer doesn't know what to expect from them. And as you can see also that the low-price regional market has the biggest growth and we have outperformed also the low price market. So I think we have done very, very good in the past, and that's what we're going to continue to do in the future. One of the strong parts of our company is that we are very good at opening new stores. So we are almost profitable from day 1. So from history wise, we are profitable in an early stage. And after less than a year, we are pay back. And we have a very strong team for that one, and we are discussing how can we actually expand it even faster. We have like a record of 17 new stores for a year, and that's we will discuss also for the future. And as I mentioned, we have more than 100 stores in the last 10 years. And last not least, as I mentioned also, the payback time for new stores has been approximately 1 year in the past. Denmark, we discussed about Denmark earlier. Last year, last October -- sorry, in early autumn, we entered Denmark. We said that we didn't have any competition in our segment. It's also a fierce competition in Denmark, you have been there. Each have sale each and every week. But in the low-price segment, we don't have any competition. So it's a little bit -- so we were very curious. Will it work? So we started with 4 now, 4 stores, and I must say they've been very successful. So even though we don't have this one to attract the customer each and every week, even though we don't have a customer club, we are performing well. So that was the reason why we decided, okay, let's continue that journey. The Danish they like us with only 4 stores, and we will double that up during this year. So it looks really, really promising. We have, as I mentioned, 4 stores, so we will double it up. We are continuing to looking on the growth for the coming years. We believe a lot in Denmark. Yes, that's about it, I think. So the key takes from me, we have a very strong concept, very, very strong concept that is working on not only the Swedish market, it seems to be working in the Danish market, and we think it's working in many markets also. So of course, we will also evaluate now what's next? That's a discussion in the group. What's next? We will definitely continue in Sweden and Denmark, and we're discussing should we go somewhere else. And I said that we were -- when I started speech that we are a rough diamond. A rough diamond means that nothing is broken, everything could be better. And the one that I foresee when discussed this with Peter, I wouldn't say weaknesses, but the potential for the company, that is what Tokmanni is having everything sourcing offices in Asia, this building that we're standing in quality and sustainability that we need to work even harder with, we can work together. So that's why I think that we are a very, very good match. Yes. I know there will be some questions afterwards, and I will try to do my best to answer them as well.

Sure. Actually, Tapio, would you like to join and take us through the strategic targets and some financials as well.

Yes. Thank you, Mika, and good afternoon, everyone. So let's go through the targets. So as most of you probably remember, we had these targets set 3 years ago when we had our previous Capital Markets Day. And we have reviewed them and revised some of them slightly. So starting with revenue. Our new target for revenue for 2025 is EUR 1.8 billion. And as you recall, our previous target was EUR 1.5 billion. Our comparable EBIT target on the other hand is unchanged. So we are still targeting EUR 150 million of comparable EBIT in 2025. Our store network, obviously, the target is revised with the acquisition of DollarStore, and we are now targeting more than 360 stores in Nordics. And when we talk about these stores, we mean Tokmanni stores, Big Dollar and DollarStore. So it excludes the Click Shoes and the Miny stores, which are clearly smaller in size. And our previous target was more than 220 stores in Finland. Then our net debt to comparable EBITDA. So we actually changed the definition there a little bit to be more in line with our comparable companies. So we are now looking at that ratio, excluding IFRS16 impact. And our new target for that figure is lower than 2.25 at the end of the fiscal year. In our previous target, which included the IFRS16 impact was below 3.2. Our final target, our dividend policy remains unchanged. So we are targeting approximately 70% of net result to be paid out as dividends. And as previously, that the decision to distribute dividends is dependent on a number of factors, including capital structure, financial position, general economic and business conditions as well as future prospects. So then moving on to our key financial metrics. So here, we have the group revenue target and also our guidance for this year. And as you can see, despite, let's say, uncertain markets in the past few years, we have been able to grow our revenues every year. And obviously, last year, the majority of the growth comes from the DollarStore acquisition. In our guidance for 2024 is EUR 1.66 million to EUR 1.76 billion. And as stated on the previous slide, our target for next year is then EUR 1.8 billion. Our other key guidance is our comparable EBIT. And there, you can clearly see more clearly the impact of the COVID-19 in '20 and '21, where the EBIT climbed considerably above it's, let's say, its standard level. And then in 2022, we had a, let's say, a very difficult year. And now in 2023, we had a comparable EBIT of around EUR 99 million. And we are targeting strong growth in EBIT as well for next year. So our guidance for EBIT for 2024 is EUR 110 million to EUR 130 million. And our 2025 target is EUR 150 million. So with that, I think we have concluded our presentation for today, and we are now open for questions.

Okay. Thank you very much, Tapio. [ Maria ], is it like this that we will take first the questions from here. And then afterwards, you start following the chat and also the Teams link, we will get some more questions. So who wants to start?

Svante Krokfors from Nordea. First question to Mika and you have mentioned about the Finnish growth that you have had from M&A. Will you still be continue to look at Finnish opportunities to widen the assortment or for other reasons for M&A in Finland also.

Yes, of course. I don't think there will be so many acquisitions considering like retail chains where there are like store locations. We have the 4 new Tokmanni stores already for this year. They are being -- the building is already going on. And we have the missing 15, we have the spots, the ideas already very clear. So actually, we're not looking for the retail chain acquisitions, but probably something like, for example, Catmandoo, which is supporting our apparel business. That's something that we're all the time in discussions with different operators. But at the moment, there is no acquisitions going on in that sense.

And then a question to Anders regarding the Danish market. What are the big differences from your point of view between Sweden and Denmark when it comes to the consumer behavior and your opportunities there.

Okay. The biggest differences between the markets. Well, we can start with the customer. We have been working -- we can start with the customer. We have been working to look at who is the customer of DollarStore in Sweden in particular. And we see, as you said, the lowest price, and we have the youngsters, they are our like coming to the stores. And then if you go now when we have opened in -- and we have been -- we want all the people as well. We want the families, we want the women and we want the men of course. And if we go to Denmark now, for example, we say it's a total another kind of customer. So the customer coming to our stores is a mix of the population. So it's not only the one we have less in the pocket or anything or the youngsters, its each and every one. So that's the biggest thing. And second, the difference between the retail markets, it's huge because we have -- in Sweden, we have low-price retailers similar to [indiscernible], more. And we don't find that in Denmark. In Denmark, Bilka or if you have fotex or Kvickly or whatever they are called, they have nonfood products, and they have sales each and every week. So it's another way of competition.

Yes. It's perhaps a bit surprising that you are alone -- it's a bit surprising that you are alone in your category in Denmark. So do you see any risk that competition catches up there.

We are -- I don't see competition as a risk. That's -- we see that's the benefit. And I think that makes us better. And we also -- we see it when we open stores, when we have competition around us, we are selling more. So I would say that I welcome it. But of course, that's -- competition is good.

Maria Wikstrom from SEB. I think Janne mentioned the trend that there is like U.S. discount retailers are adding fresh food in this election. And I would think -- I mean, this is basically to drive traffic, to get people more in the stores because running a brick-and-mortar store, you have quite high fixed costs. So you need the people to come in to the stores more. So I wonder that what's your view there? Because you already have a fresh food in some of your stores, I mean, minority of them, but why would you now look more into the adding Click Shoes and the clothing brands rather than actually going for the fresh food.

Well, we've said, first of all, that clothing is our destination category. And we want to be #1 retailer with clothing. So that's why Click Shoes, Catmandoo all of these are supporting that target. With food, it's for Tokmanni, it's a little bit difficult to be the #1 retailer in Finland. Yes, of course, we have out of 20 -- 200 stores, we have fresh food in 20 stores. And yes, we do have very good results from there. But it's a different kind of business it's very -- for our size retailer to be able to compete with the big food retailers, that's very difficult. So it's very easy for us to sell food as we do like snacks and beverages and candies and coffee and so other groceries. But fresh food, it's still a little bit difficult. But we are, of course, monitoring that all the time, that part of the business. But it's not that we would be doing like a big step up with fresh food.

Okay. Then I wanted to touch base on the joint sourcing organization that you have with the Europris because lately, I think Europris have now got the permission to acquire the [indiscernible]. So then you would be like with your partner, you are head-to-head competition in the Swedish market. So how would that work?

Well, that's actually very simple. We are buying goods with -- through our buying office. And I could imagine that there are like several and globally in retail, there are like several companies, competitors buying through the same trader or agency and there is no problem. So obviously, we will see what's important for our categories. But at the moment, we don't see any problem over there. And for example, when it comes to clothing, for example, Europris doesn't have that much clothing at all as what we do, and we have like a dedicated team for Tokmanni clothing in our office. So I don't see a problem with that.

And then finally, I don't know if the person to ask Anders or Mika on the question, as you said, I mean, the -- it was the previous founder, Peter Ahlberg who sold you the concept of DollarStore. So I wonder if you were first I mean you were the guinea pig for the pitch, I mean, how good is the DollarStore and then the same presentation was given to Mika. But if it's such a fantastic I mean, concept, and there's a lot of growth opportunities, quite interesting, like why the founder wanted to step away at this point.

It's a very good question. Yes. No, but when we talked in the beginning, he said Anders, I think I've come to the end of the road. So I also want you to know that I will sell the company. And I want you to be -- take lead. And I said, sure. I will do that. But I want you to say I said at the time because I thought it was too early. But -- and also now truth be told, I expected that he wanted us to build the company first. And then it comes quite suddenly, okay, they took it directly. So we worked really, really hard. And of course, that was a big question mark for all of us what would happen now. But as I mentioned, we stated that there are so many things that we can be even better on. So -- and when Tokmanni purchased us, I was really happy because that was a shortcut. Was that an answer to your question?

Yes. I may be curious that I mean if you had the same discussion with [indiscernible] as well, the beauty of discount retailer.

Yes. Actually, the first time I met him, of course, that was in the early process of the DD process. And we had a good talk, of course, and I've got the same feeling for him that he like an entrepreneur, just like Peter, he has been working very long time, and he's very charismatic in this one. So we definitely found each other as well.

Calle Loikkanen from Danske Bank. Just 1 question on the 2025 targets. Basically, the targets imply an EBIT margin of 8.3%, which is roughly 1.2% points higher than the '23 numbers that you just released this morning. Could you kind of elaborate on what the drivers for this margin improvement for the next couple of years would be? Where is it coming from? How big impact and so on.

Yes. Well, let's start with the volumes. Obviously, we -- as what we've been talking during the last one and a half hours like strong growth. Obviously, the growth brings better profitability. Then of course, we're talking about buying and sourcing together with DollarStore, and we definitely feel that we are able to achieve a lot of better buying prices, well, synergies, which will also bring improved profitability. And of course, I have to say that it's been a little bit difficult year for Tokmanni, also with DollarStore, there are a lot of potential. I could imagine that DollarStore can improve its profitability together with Tokmanni. There are like a lot of opportunities with -- when it comes to buying and sourcing, let's start from there, and then, of course, sharing other resources. We are a pretty sure that DollarStore also is able to improve the profitability as well as Tokmanni. For example, if you compare with 2023, it's easy to talk about this space over here in [indiscernible]. We actually, in the beginning of 2023, I think that we had 7 external warehouses due to the problems with inventories and then 2 small space for our -- in that warehouse, which is 500 meters from here. As Janne mentioned, we are getting rid of all the external warehouses. There is only one left and that's in 2 months' time, there won't be any external warehouses. These external warehouses, first of all, their rental costs are much higher compared with this one plus they're causing additional costs due to moving the goods between the warehouses and collecting the stuff for our stores. So it's like very expensive operation and now actually in 2 months' time, there won't be any of these anymore. So that's why, for example, we think that we're able to be on a good level with our OpEx.

I can add on also that DollarStore in the past, they didn't have any sourcing offices. So they went through agents and traders and that was one of the opportunities to start to work together, of course, negotiate together go via the sourcing office. And we have seen when we took into our own warehouse. So they have -- we had, in the past, direct deliveries through stores. When we take it into our own warehouse, we have a very good increase of the margin.

All right. That's very helpful. Then just perhaps quickly on DollarStore as well. I know you just recently entered Denmark, so perhaps it's a bit too early. But you mentioned you are looking at potentially other markets as well. Any thoughts on which direction you're looking at?

Yes. No, all focus now is on Sweden and Denmark, truth to tell, but at the same time, we do investigation, then we see, okay, what is the competition in different markets around Northern Europe, I can say, we're checking out would the DollarStore concept working in each and every market and we have like a check on each and every market. So yes, we think that we could be working in more countries than Sweden and Denmark. Maybe Finland.

Maybe one more follow-up on that. I mean, given you have a track record with Rusta, and I think they chose to go to Germany instead of Denmark saying that they are equally difficult discount markets and then the potential is bigger in Germany than Denmark. But then you chose to go to the Denmark and I mean why do you think -- I mean the Rustas are saying that it's a very difficult market for this country that are because now when I listen to you, I mean, it seems that there is no other concepts like you. So there is like basically the full pathway. I mean just to continue and grow there.

I should, of course, not answer their questions, Rusta. But I can say from DollarStore perspective, our assortment, the wide assortment with the lowest price, I think if you look on it, if you go into each and every country, Germany and things like that, our concept is working in each and every country. They should, of course, explain if their concept is working in other markets as well, of course.

If I may add to that, please correct me if I'm wrong, but Danish market, as I know that is very campaign-driven, customers are looking for the best prices, the best campaigns and so on. DollarStore has very unique pricing strategy. As Anders mentioned, there are no campaigns. It's from the start, it's the lowest possible price. That, of course, it's a unique pricing strategy in Sweden. And in Denmark, it's definitely a completely different pricing strategy compared any other competitors. That makes it extremely interesting.

And if I may, one more on sustainability. I think this is for you, Sirpa. I mean, I do acknowledge that the discount retail is growing, but then I think there is -- I mean, if we talk about clothing, there is a lot of these kind of thesis saying that each and every one of us should buy only, I mean, 5 garments a year. I mean that's sustainable. And then in your strategy, I think you mentioned that it's treasure hunting embedded fun factor. So how does this work actually in like the sustainability if we think about that we are going to, I mean, keep the world for the next generations to come.

Yes. It's -- we don't work alone. It's not my team and sustainability team that does this work. We work together with the purchasing teams and actually we have made the path, how do we follow our sustainability kind of rules that we have made -- the targets that we have made to each other so that actually they can do better job when they go treasure hunting to Asia or something that they follow our rules. So it's not me or my team. It's actually the purchasing team who is doing the work there. And we really worked closely together that we can be proud in being sustainable when we go doing the purchasing. I don't know if that answered your question, but that's how we work, and that's how we start working also in DollarStore.

Thinking about it a bit more on like a consumer point of the view that, I mean, like should we -- like is it sustainable for all of us to buy less and then I think in the discount retail concept in general, it's a lot about like treasure hunting kind of like an embedded fun factor. So then it's probably like more buying more than less.

Yes. Because of the new regulations, we have to be very kind of strong in understanding how do we buy and what do we buy and what are the ingredients of our -- the products that we buy. And we have a lot of trading going on in that sense because actually, we can't be shopping that freely anymore than we maybe did it like 5 or 10 years ago, we need to kind of understand better what we're doing. So it is a huge work we are doing together at the moment.

But I can add on something. It is a tricky question, but DollarStore's perspective is that we -- you should trust us that we have produced the product in a sustainable way that is good products is from a quality perspective. So that's one thing that you should always trust. And then we, of course, try to see that we should not have -- what is it, materials and things like that. And secondly, from our perspective, we want -- it shouldn't be for everyone to shop. So everybody should afford to shop. So if you have data, the perspective, produce it in a good way and everybody should be able to buy their Christmas present or birthday present because everybody can't afford that. So I think you should add that on to the whole picture.

Tommy Ilmoni from Carnegie. A question regarding DollarStore. I mean I don't really understand why the financials aren't better. I mean you're growing fast. You've been growing tremendously, but still there is not that much left on the bottom line. So I would like to understand what's the reason why the profitability hasn't improved considering that have been growing fast. And is there actually a big difference between new -- profitability of new stores or stores that have been opened for a couple of years compared to those that have been on the market for say, 10 years.

Maybe I can answer, some of my perspectives and Tapio maybe can answer as well. We see that the new stores that we open now in the mature market, we are faster for profitability in the big cities around when we have competition around, we see that we have a faster return of investment and that was also in Denmark, we can see that the one that is -- we have tough competition, fierce competition around us, we have done better. So that's number one. And the second question, I was also amazed when I was working on this, how can you afford to open these many stores each and every year. So as it is an investment to open 100 stores during 10 years. So it is a relevant question. I don't know if you want to add on something to that, Tapio.

Yes. I think one addition, maybe if you compare like Tokmanni stores to DollarStore, so an average Tokmanni store has maybe EUR 6 million of net sales per year and DollarStore has around EUR 3 million. So there's a big opportunity there to increase there, let's say, sales per store in DollarStore with, let's say, bringing some of the Tokmanni range into DollarStore. So that's, I think, one thing because I mean on a gross margin level DollarStore is quite good, and then they have a lot of OpEx. But one of the reasons they have more OpEx as a percent of sales is because they have half the sales of Tokmanni store.

But you have stores that have been there in the market already for quite some time. So how are they performing compared to the new ones.

It differs actually. It's -- some of them are doing extremely well. Of course, there are somebodies that with few population can have problems. What I can say, what we work with is the assortment. So one of the potential that I talked about when I entered this company is the potentials inside that we can like-for-like sales. So not only growing organically, that we will look who's the customer that doesn't come to us today. So that's maybe -- and we have identified that and we will work against that as well, keep the existing customers and also add on some assortments to attract new customers.

Maybe I would add something and again, please correct me if I'm wrong, but DollarStore has the basic idea, at least from the Finnish point of view is it's very -- it's relative to the U.S. based dollar stores. They started with like only $1 -- only items with $1 that was it. That was actually quite a long time, the idea for that. If you go to a DollarStore, you will find a lot of products with SEK 10 or SEK 20 or SEK 30, meaning like it's like $0.89, $1.70 and things like this. It's like very, very cheap products, very good, very affordable products. If I compare to Tokmanni, we're selling actually more high ticket products, which of course, also affects the revenue for a store. Now of course, we're actually studying quite a lot like, okay, without losing the fantastic price image, the best price image in Sweden, can DollarStore actually widen the assortment and bringing in some products, which are slightly higher not only SEK 30, but maybe SEK 50 to SEK 100. Of course, you do have this, but not that many. But anyway, that's -- if you're selling like products with very low ticket, of course, it's difficult to get like EUR 6 million revenues per store that you have to bring out new assortment as well. This is a huge opportunity but of course, at the same time, DollarStore cannot lose this reputation of extremely low prices.

It's Miika Ihamaki from DNB Markets. On your financial targets, EUR 1.8 billion in sales, EUR 150 million in adjusted EBIT end of '25. Could you split this between Tokmanni and Dollarstore?

The 2025 figures?

The targets, if you could split them between DollarStore and Tokmanni.

No, I guess Tapio I think that we haven't really split them.

We have not split them. So I think you'll get more information once we publish our Q4 results next month. So but we don't split, we just have that for the group, the targets. But I think if you looked at the number of stores opening for DollarStore and for Tokmanni this year, you can maybe deduce from there that probably DollarStore will grow a bit quicker than Tokmanni in the next years to come.

Sure. Then a quick question on the next -- or this year's guidance. So you implicitly guide for a slightly lower profitability into this year. I get that there will be some dilution from DollarStore, quite a few new store openings that may temporarily drag profitability, but I also understand that there are several positive drivers. So could you talk about the most important assumptions behind your '24 EBIT guidance? And I'm particularly interested in your assumptions about freight costs in the context of potential financial impact from Red Sea.

Yes. Well, maybe I'll start with the freight question. You may Tapio continue then a little bit more about this. But yes, of course, it's very unfortunate situation. I have to say that we are at the moment I think it's -- the number is almost like 500 containers that we have -- that we are waiting for the spring season. It's a lot. It's a lot of let's say, seasonal items. And yes, of course, we hope that in Finland, the winter continues because the delay is very clear. And we do have some additional costs from this one and not really -- it will, of course, have an effect on the results for 2024. However, we've taken that to consideration already with the guidance. And of course, we do hope that we get like some kind of solution. But at the moment, it doesn't look, according to our contractor, it doesn't look very promising the situation -- solving the situation. So it looks as we will be continuing, taking our containers around Africa to get them over here. Of course, the only delay is coming for the spring season, for example, for Christmas season. We are already prepared with that sending the containers a little bit earlier. But the additional costs we've taken into consideration with the guidance.

Yes. And obviously, the DollarStore will be in our figures for the full year. Last year, there were only 5 months. So that obviously impacted figures. And then, of course, there's seasonality both for Tokmanni and DollarStore. So as you probably remember, Tokmanni has a pretty high seasonality in terms of profitability and DollarStore maybe has a little bit less seasonality in net sales, but also given the very low or not very low but lower profitability than Tokmanni, it also has an impact on, let's say, the EBIT percent in different quarters for DollarStore. And then like I said, DollarStore is opening a bit more stores. And then we, of course, add some like-for-like growth for both companies. So that's the sort of -- when you do the math there, then you end up with the guidance we have issued. So it's not very complicated in a way. And of course, we had some synergies there, of course, like I said, we have communicated this EUR 15 million annual synergies in 2.5 years' time. So of course, it's not going to be nearly fully this year yet, but some synergies, of course, included there as well.

Okay. [indiscernible] from Nordea. Maybe 1 question related to the sourcing when we are now speaking about it. If I recall correctly, during last CMD, you were speaking about expanding the direct sourcing operations and sourcing offices. So now you are materially larger company after the acquisition. So can you give any color on this? Do you need to expand the operations in the Asia on the direct sourcing side.

Well, it's actually not really the, let's say, the group size. Yes, by the way, we have already an office also in Vietnam. But at the moment, the world is a little bit unstable and so is also like the buying and sourcing from China, and that's why we're also like looking at other markets, for example, India. I think, Anders, you will be visiting India in just one month time or something like that to see a little bit like, okay, what's happening with the market, whether, for example, India would be offering some backup if something happens. So these kind of things. But basically, when it comes to a lot of categories that we are sharing together with the DollarStore. Just let's pick up like batteries or light bulbs. It's exactly the same product that we can start selling in Sweden and in Finland. It's a private label. So it works very well. The same private label probably works in both countries and even in Denmark. So it's only more volumes for the supplier and they can do it. So we don't actually need to enlarge the office over there, but we need to see a little bit like, okay, what's happening in the world. So that's in the plan.

Calle Loikkanen from Danske Bank. Again, I was kind of interested -- it was a very interesting discussion about the average sales per store, Tokmanni versus DollarStore. So Anders, maybe a question to you that what from the Tokmanni assortment would you like to see at DollarStore? I know Mika and Tapio probably have want to push all sorts of stuff. But what would you like to have if you look at the offering now.

Actually, we should ask our customers. So -- and we have done that. We have asked the customers, okay, the one that is not visiting us frequently today, what do you want? And then we have identified and we start to work together with this. So it's very good that we can see, okay, there are some garden furniture. There are some barbecues that we will try. We are discussing some DIY. We take the product from the apparel. So like we are identifying the big sellers for Tokmanni and we try to put them into DollarStore assortment.

Now of course, it's easy also to test -- just to like -- take couple of containers from here and testing some Swedish stores. I think 2 weeks ago, we visited in Denmark, the big DollarStore. And 2 weeks ago, in Denmark, it was -- the ground was already like green, so the store manager were saying like, [ can you ] send us some garden furniture and barbecues anything to do with Garden because they're having like a start of the spring time over there.

Yes. So that was the question -- that was the answer, yes. So big -- again, big potential in finding the right products from -- not only from Tokmanni, but also other assortments.

Well, if there are no other questions from here or at least maybe there will be, but let's take something from chat or from Teams link.

[Operator Instructions] We have one question. Arttu, please go ahead.

It is Arttu Heikura from Inderes. Do you hear me?

Yes.

Okay. I have few cases -- what are your ambitions or targets in terms of number of SKUs in DollarStore?

Actually, we -- as I mentioned, we think that right now, we are good when we start up 11,000 we start up and we will have up to 14,000 to 15,000 after a year. So depending on season. So we don't close any doors. We want to have each and every product should have a purpose. So we don't take in products just because we want them to say, okay, to the customer wants this. And in that case, they say, yes, we will take it into our assortment.

Okay. So you do something -- some testing with some categories or something like that?

Yes. As we said, we are doing test with Tokmanni and to try out different kind of assortments. And on that, we also do things. As we said, we are -- we want to approach the families and the women and the coming men with that one. What do they want, what kind of assortment do they want? Well, it shows that they want for example, home decorations, they want more of the textiles, more of these kind of products and do Tokmanni has it, we will definitely take it from them. Otherwise, we will source them by ourselves.

Okay. And are you planning to open a web store to a DollarStore.

No. We're not.

[indiscernible]

Not at this moment. But -- and the reason is quite simple. We have very low-priced products. And I can't see any at this moment, see any benefits for the customer or for the Tokmanni Group, we will love that one. But ask me in a year again, and I will see if that's changed.

[Operator Instructions]. There's no further questions.

Maria has one more question here.

Yes. I mean this is for Tapio, as you have the new net debt-to-EBITDA target, which is before IFRS16. So will you report an EBITDA before IFRS16 impact so we can follow on where you go in your target.

Of course, we will report that. Yes.

Any more questions? If not, thank you very much for all of you participating in Tokmanni Group Capital Markets Day. And we are having the fourth quarter results from 2023 on the 22nd of March. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.