Pandora A/S

Pandora A/S

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10.34P/E
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Nov 04Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptJanuary 9, 2026

Bilal Aziz

Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to this short conference call where we thought it would be helpful to outline some of the key points from the trading statement we just released a few hours ago. This pertains to the Q4 trading period.

I have with me today Berta de Pablos-Barbier, Group CEO, and Anders Boyer, Group CFO, as well as the rest of the IR team. There will be a chance to ask some questions at the end.

If you kindly limit yourself to 1 or 2, that would be great. On that note, I will hand over to Berta.

Berta de Pablos-Barbier

Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining us today at short notice. You will have seen the trading statement released earlier today, with Anders I will briefly cover some key points and also add some context.

As CEO, my focus is to continue to strengthen brand desirability and deliver sustainable long-term growth. It is clear to me that Pandora has many untapped growth opportunities.

Now, the macro environment is challenging, which requires us to sharpen execution and focus in selected areas to strengthen brand desirability. I will come back to you in due course with our plans on that.

Now, let's turn to performance. In Q4, our like-for-like was flat.

Including network expansion and other, organic growth for the quarter was 4%, resulting in full-year organic growth of 6%. This was below our guidance of 7-8% organic growth for the year.

The EBIT margin is expected to be around 24%, in line with our guidance. The quarter 4 like-for-like reflects a deceleration versus quarter 3 driven by North America.

Europe remained broadly stable, although with opportunities to strengthen execution. On North America, after 3 quarters of strong growth, we continued to grow, but slowed to 2% like-for-like growth in quarter 4, and organic growth at 8%, +8%.

Now, growth was impacted by softer traffic over the holiday period, though we did continue to outperform the overall market on traffic. Now, given the short period since the year-end, our data and insights remains, of course, preliminary.

However, available indicators suggest that the overall category faced challenges in quarter 4, particularly within the accessible market segment. Now, we of course don't know how the consumer will behave through 2026 in North America, but we are confident that our brand is in a very good shape and we have a solid starting point, and we will talk more about that in February.

Now, in Europe, our growth was broadly stable, sequentially at -1% like-for-like and organic at +2%. Now, there's quite a few different moving pieces in Europe given the number of markets and the different characteristics between them.

The story remains broadly unchanged from prior quarters. While macro does not help either in Europe, we do see areas where we can strengthen execution.

On that note, I'll now hand over to Anders on profitability.

Anders Boyer

Thank you, Berta, and good afternoon everyone. Very briefly on profitability, then even though the top line ended a touch below the guidance, our EBIT margin is still expected to land in line with the guidance.

We did demonstrate quite good cost discipline in the fourth quarter, in my opinion, and the Silverstone cost program that many of you know about is progressing nicely, and the gross margin remained healthy. The profitability remains in line with our expectation.

Specifically on the Q4 EBIT margin, that's expected to land at around 33.5%. That's despite the significant external headwinds which we have flagged earlier on and that you are all aware about.

That's the headwinds from foreign exchange, commodities, tariffs, which total around 400 basis points in Q4. The EBIT margin of 33.5% in Q4 is quite a good outcome considering that the EBIT margin in Q4 of 2024, the year before, was around 100 basis points higher only.

As already said, this means that the full-year EBIT margin will land at around 24% and thereby in line with the expectations we set out in the third-quarter announcement. For the sake of good order, I just want to stress that these numbers that we have announced today are still unaudited and therefore preliminary.

With that, I'll hand back to Berta for the closing comments.

Berta de Pablos-Barbier

Thank you, Anders. To conclude so that we can go back to the questions, while our recent performance has come below expectations, the fundamentals of our business remain very strong.

The brand is healthy, our core collections are solid, and our vertically integrated supply chain and scale do remain very powerful assets. Now, that said, quarter 4 and full-year 2025 results came below our standards and commitments.

Now, after several years of outspacing the category and driving solid growth, of course, operating in a more complex environment require us to be more demanding in how we generate growth. This means to be sharper on what works and decisive in course-correcting where momentum has softened.

Today, of course, this is not a comprehensive update. You will hear more of that in a few weeks.

However, some priorities are already clear. A key focus for us is to re-energize our collections and strengthen brand relevance.

This approach is particularly important in mature markets. Now, we are also focused on addressing the impact of high silver prices and are moving at pace on actions across new products and materials to protect margins and improve value creation.

To close, there remains significant untapped opportunities for Pandora as a desirable accessible jewelry brand, and we are moving with discipline and rigor to strengthen brand desirability and position Pandora for long-term value creation. I am really looking forward to sharing more detail with you on our call on February the 5th.

With that, I'll hand over to Bilal.

Bilal Aziz

Thank you, Berta. We can open up to Q&A.

I also want to highlight that any questions relating to 2026 top line or EBIT margin we will not answer right now and get back in the 5th of February for a comprehensive view. With that, we're happy to open up to Q&A.

Operator

If you do wish to ask a question, you will need to press 5 * on your telephone. To withdraw your questions, press 5 * again.

In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to 1 or 2 questions. If you have additional questions, you may rejoin the queue.

Our first question will be from the line of Grace Smalley from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Your line is now unmuted.

Grace Smalley

Great, thank you very much. The first question would just be on the US weakness and if you could just elaborate more on what you saw there during the holiday period.

Any color on traffic versus ASP and conversion or any detail of breaking that down by region within the US. It sounds like, Berta, you believed that this was really more market-driven than necessarily company-specific or execution issues.

Again, if you could just dig into that a little bit more on what gives you confidence that that is the case. Then my second question would be on Europe, where it's very clear you think there are some brand initiatives you can put in place to strengthen the brand's relevance in Europe.

I believe you had started to put some of those in place already in Italy. I guess, were you surprised that you didn't start to see an improvement in the Italian performance already in Q4 given some of those initiatives and what your initial learnings are from that market so far?

Thank you very much.

Anders Boyer

Hi, Grace. It's Anders, starting out on the first one, on North America.

As as in general, there's quite a lack of data available in this industry, and then combined with the fact that it's just 9 9 days into the new year, it is a bit limited what's available. What led us to say what we announced this morning is a couple of data points.

One of the things that we track is general street traffic, and we do that not just in the US, but across all markets. What we saw across the 10 bigger markets, not just in the US, but the 10 bigger markets that we're operating in, it was only on 1 out of those 10 where the general street traffic, not Pandora numbers, were positive in Q4.

The 9 others, the general street traffic was in negative, not great. With the data that we have from ShopperTrak, that's the one that we are using, street traffic in the US was negative as well in Q4, and we did a bit better than that as we have done for quite some time, but still did that better.

That's one data point. The other data point we have is simply looking at the OECD's consumer sentiment, and that took quite a nose dive during the back half of 2025.

Actually, and I'm just looking at my colleagues here, I actually believe that US consumer confidence reached the lowest since 1960 in the US in November or December. There's something happening there.

Then I know that there are some credit card data available on the industry. I guess one of them has just announced one of them earlier today for the December numbers.

If you look at that, there is something that looks like that the sort of lower end of the market, the accessible part of the market, is actually declining or at best flat. It's that sort of combination that has led us to saying that macro actually did turn for the worse during the last couple of months, 8 weeks of 2025 in North America.

Berta de Pablos-Barbier

Absolutely. Now, thank you, Anders.

I'm taking on your second question, because I think Anders covered the first one really well. Yes, in Italy we have started doing certain things, and it's actually the analysis on the Italian market that has uncovered the issues between others that we need to focus on, which is about reinvigorating and re-energizing our collections.

What we actually see is that where we have done it, although it is very early days, but where we did something like, for example, with the launch of Minis and Talisman, this is getting a good robust pipeline that is working in the Italian market. We need to do more of those across all the collections.

We know that our Moments platform needs a little bit more of reinvigoration. This is exactly what I was referring to.

Progress is there, it takes time. We continue to monitor that and to follow on that.

Grace Smalley

Great. Thank you both very much.

Operator

Our next question will be from the line of Lars Topholm from Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Lars Topholm

Yes, just two two simple questions from me. Given your like-for-like was positive for October, can you comment on the exit rate and maybe give some colors as to the exit rate across regions?

That was the first question. The second question is, what has your average pricing been in US in Q4?

Thanks. If I have more, I'll jump back in the queue afterwards.

Bilal Aziz

Yep, I'll take the first one, Lars, then hand over to Anders. The sort of exit rate for the group, yeah, you're right.

We said around +4% in October, you can assume flattish to slightly negative in terms of exit rate from the quarter as well. By region, we won't get into too much specific color, but, again, the numbers you see in terms of the quarter-end won't be too drastically off the exit rate as well.

On to the second question, I will hand over to Anders.

Anders Boyer

I'm just making sure because I was just about to say just shy of 10, but it's just about that level, Lars. I'll double-check.

Now I say this and then I'll double-check, and if it's not correct, then we'll just get back to you, but just around 10% year-over-year price increase for the full quarter. As the quarter went by, we did sort of pass the price increase comp in October of '24.

It was higher in the beginning and lower at the end, but on average, just high single digit, 8-9, 9% on average for the quarter up.

Lars Topholm

Maybe in that context, it doesn't count as a third question, how was the promotional activity for you and for the whole market as you saw it in Q4?

Anders Boyer

It's basically been flat year-over-year. I think that's the so it remains at a high level, but not worse than last year, to speak.

Even though we've seen that the general trading environment in November and December was soft, we didn't see sort of additional crazy behavior, if I can put it like that, both for ourselves and the market.

Operator

Thank you very much. I'll jump into the queue again.

Thanks. Next up is Chris Wan from UBS.

Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.

Chris Wan

Volumes after 2 2. The first one on the volume thing in Q4.

If I remember correctly, in the Q3 conference call, you were commenting that the volumes in October were pretty much back to flattish, slightly down flattish. Given the price increase you had in Q4, is it fair to say that volumes for globally as a whole was down mid-single-digit in the quarter?

Do you think there's any self-help measures you can pull out of your pocket to kind of inject that volume momentum back to the brand? Then secondly, on the opex control, I think based on the guidance, the expected gross margin, EBIT margin for Q4, it does seem like you have very strong opex control.

I'm just wondering if you can get a little bit more color in terms of the three main opex lines here. I'm talking about marketing, sales and distribution, admin costs, and especially given that like-for-like is generally quite muted, I'm just trying to understand what was the opex lines that were driving a strong opex.

Anders Boyer

Hi, Chris. It's Anders.

Let me start out there on units. If you look at the total units that we actually sold and that hits in the P&L for Q4, then units is flat in Q4.

Then that means that the revenue growth of 4% that we delivered in Q4 is consisting of flat units, 0 units, and roughly 4% pricing increases. That's roughly the dynamics.

Sequentially compared to Q3, sort of volumes are better as we had expected, but still sort of only flat overall when we look at the total business. On the opex control, yeah, fortunately, a year back or so, when silver prices started going up, we institutionalized a structured cost program, the Silverstone cost program, as we call it.

Now with the top line also has been softer in Q3 and Q4, that comes in quite handy that we have a machine rolling already that can help us sort of push up the hunt for decimals around the company and looking for lower cost. We have not been compromising marketing spending.

I think that's important to state. With all kind of other things where we have been dialling a bit up on the opex discipline and we did that actually a while back when we saw already Q3 being soft.

Then on top of that, of course, there's, given like-for-like landed below where we had expected it, the bonus programs are linked very much to like-for-like. That also means that there's been some reversal of provisions in Q4, unfortunately.

That's kind of why you have programs like that in place so that there's some variability in the opex lines that helps if you're missing a bit on the top line, then bottom line is protected. Then I didn't fully get the question on self-help, maybe I missed something.

Bilal Aziz

If there's any more you can do on self-help going forward.

Anders Boyer

That's a clear yes. Is the way to put it.

Go ahead, Chris. On volume.

Chris Wan

On volume. I just wanted to clarify that volume comment.

Anders, you mentioned that volumes overall total units are flattish in Q4 year-over-year. I guess that includes that 4% network expansion, right?

If I look on a like-for-like basis, are volumes down mid-single-digit?

Anders Boyer

Yeah. Then you basically subtract the 4%.

You're absolutely right in your math, Chris.

Chris Wan

Perfect. Thanks so much.

Operator

Our next question will be from the line of Anthony Chaussé from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Anthony Charchafji

Yes, good morning. Thank you very much for taking my question.

I have two. The first one would be on the fuel with more.

A big part of the story is to diversify Pandora outside charms. We see that fuel with more is now underperforming.

Maybe there might be also a negative mix impact on it. It's more to have your view on if you still see into next year fuel with more outgrowing the core category and if you have any plan in terms of newness in this category.

The second question is on the pricing. Actually Europe stabilizing.

I think that you've put a bit of pricing in Europe, probably 3% in October. Just wanted to have some feedback on how did it go and what are the next step in terms of pricing.

Thank you.

Berta de Pablos-Barbier

I'll take the first one, Anders. Yes, on fuel with more, you alluded to it, mix is part of it, because Timeless grew at 3% and Essence continued to grow in the year.

If you look at what happened this year is that we innovated mainly on the core, which has a very decent sustained performance, with the launch of Talisman and Minis and all the activation that we put behind. I come back into what we're doing now is re-energizing all the collections, whether they are in the core to refresh our icons, or whether it's about extending and expanding what is fuel with more.

Anders Boyer

Then, Anthony, on the pricing in Europe, you're right that we did some price changes back in October, and it looks okay. It's still early days.

The reason I'm saying that is that when you go through these 2 months, 8 weeks or 6-7 weeks of holiday trading, it becomes a little bit more blurred because there's so much going on, so much promotion going on. It looks like that it was the right decision.

We have not sort of shouted out in general that we have changed pricing. We do expect to see that step by step the unit uplift becomes better.

Far, we are on track compared to what we set out to do back in October. On pricing looking forward, there's two two stories.

One is that the baseline is that we are back to the standard model algorithm of 1-2% pricing per year. That's our starting point.

We've done quite a lot on pricing in '24 and '25, and now think the 1-2 points that helps offset annual salaries, inflation that hits the P&L. Where the jury is still out, that's what the significant increases in silver, gold, and tariffs, how that plays out in retail prices in the industry.

That could lead to something beyond the 1-2%, but we have not concluded that yet, and what exactly that means. Of course, we are hit by higher silver and gold as and when hedging expires.

All other brands will be that as well, maybe even more so, given that our gross margins are relatively higher, and thereby the relative hit that we get from higher commodity prices is less than the industry in average. Something will happen, but exactly how that plays out, we're not ready to talk about yet.

Anthony Charchafji

Thank you. Just on hedging, you didn't resume hedging since we last spoke during the Q3 conference call?

Still 25% unhedged for '26?

Anders Boyer

You're right, and that will give a slight nuance to that. I'll say we are at least 75% hedged for 2026.

We'll talk a bit more about that on Feb 5 obviously. Given sort of the mix of what we're selling, there's a little bit less silver consumption, and a few other more technical elements means that we are a bit more than 75% hedged for 2026.

That will still be a hit from silver being much higher since we lastly spoke, but a little bit less than the 25% unhedged would otherwise lead to.

Anthony Charchafji

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Next up is Daria Nasledysheva from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Your line is now unmuted.

Daria Nasledysheva

Hello, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions.

This is Daria from Bank of America, and I have two. The first one would be that the press release mentions that you will be sharing your thinking on commodity exposure already in February.

Will we know your entire plans and metal strategy at the time of full-year guidance? Because I believe before you were mentioning that you were planning to share this with the market a bit later in the year.

Is the thinking accelerated around this? Just wondering on the timing of communication and what we will actually know at what point.

My second question is a little bit more on the cost lines. I think there was another question before and sorry if I missed.

Did any of the margin support in Q4 come from marketing, and how are you thinking about the brand revitalization and re-energizing the brand into next year and managing with the marketing versus the rest of the costs? Thank you very much.

Berta de Pablos-Barbier

Hi, thank you, Daria. Nice talking to you.

Let me just say, in February, I will be directionally saying what are going to be our main areas and levers that we will tackle for the material strategy, we will provide more clarity versus what we have said now. That's what you can expect on February.

I think the next question was on the line so you can take that. Let me just start by saying before we talk numbers that as a brand building, I will not sacrifice marketing investments.

We have continued to invest on the brand this year to keep the strength of the brand. Anders?

Anders Boyer

Hi, Daria. On marketing, the marketing as a percent of revenue in Q4 was in line with the prior year.

Just stressing the point that Berta just made, we're not sacrificing that.

Daria Nasledysheva

Thank you very much. That's clear.

Operator

Our next question will be from the line of Martin Brenøe from Nordea. Please go ahead.

Martin Brenøe

Hi, thank you very much for taking my questions. Maybe just to you, Anders, the first question here would be how you think about the situation that you're in right now and the decelerations that you've seen on a like-for-like basis, whether you are changing your scenario a little bit in terms of the network expansion and general cash protection, thinking about also payout rates, etc., whether you are in a situation now where you need to hold back a little bit to protect yourself.

Then second question would be to Berta about the product innovation, I think looking back at 2025, you have seen Talisman and Minis, but it wasn't maybe the year where we saw the most product launches through the year. A bit curious whether we should see more gradual, all-year-round product launches in 2026, if that's how we should view it, would be super helpful.

Thank you.

Anders Boyer

Hi, Martin. Good and super relevant questions.

On the network expansion, I think the short answer is that it doesn't change the plans. Of course, if we saw just hypothetically a like-for-like being at where we saw it in Q4, and which is a combination, which is not a secret, of the online business growing and the like-for-like in the physical stores being a little bit below 0, not a surprise, if that were continued, okay, then we will have to sit down and rethink network.

We will continue to be super selective and picky in how we are deciding where and when to open up new stores. The stores that we have opened up in 2025 are very profitable.

It's really strong investments. With the payback in a year, it's ROIC accretive, quite ROIC accretive as well.

That's the starting point. We want to communicate that has no change there.

On the payout ratio, I think you're probably thinking 2027. With where silver prices are today as a starting point, if we did nothing, just sitting on the hands, that would be quite a impact on the EBIT margin and thereby indirectly cash and leverage as well.

I think the answer lies in could there be a temporary consideration to do on cash distribution? That links into how fast are we mitigating the impact of silver being in high 70s.

As hedging runs out in a year's time. How fast can we mitigate that?

That's and that we as we go through '25, we will sort of 2026, we will update you on that. The first update comes in a couple of weeks on Feb 5 on how fast we can move forward on the silver price mitigation.

Berta de Pablos-Barbier

Then on your second question, I think somehow in your question, you had the answer, which makes it easier. Yes, you should expect that we gradually be bringing more impactful designs and storytelling.

You're absolutely right. In 2025, you named some of the major launches.

If I'm really honest with ourselves, I think the main one that we did was Talisman and some collaborations. Where we did major launches that were properly supported, we performed well.

Where our designs were just familiar design variation, we're either stagnating or declining. Yes, you should be seeing more of those.

Important to know that everything that we do is based on facts and data. When we launch something in new collection, will be design-driven, but consumer-validated.

When we're going to new aesthetics, will be very selective and it will be done in a very controlled manner and with discipline.

Anthony Charchafji

Thank you so much for taking my questions. It's very helpful.

Operator

Our next question will be from the line of Anne-Laure Bismuth from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Your line will be unmuted.

Anne-Laure Bismuth

Yes, hi. Thanks you for taking my questions.

I have two questions. The first, I know you have changed the reporting, but can you give a bit more granularity of the performance for the rest of Pandora that has slowed down also?

Also the second question is about the gross margin. Can you give us the gross margin bridge for Q4, the building blocks, please?

Thank you.

Anders Boyer

It's a little bit early on the gross margin bridge, but just to give you one one data point, if you sum up the last year oh, that's now 2 years ago, but Q4 '24, the gross margin was 79.8%, and delivering around 78% in Q4 this year, let's call it a 180 basis points down. In that mix, if you combine commodity, FX, and tariffs, we're getting to I'm just doing the math in my head here, 310 basis points.

Let's call it 300 basis points of external headwind in Q4. I think we spoke pretty much about that in the third quarter announcement, but 300 basis points down across those.

Out of the 310 basis points of headwind, we're mitigating what is that? 140.

Roughly half. Then the rest is bits and pieces, to be honest.

It's those three that are the big drivers in the quarter. Then on Rest of Pandora, you're right, we are moving crazily towards the new disclosure, but it was predominantly Spain was super strong, as was Portugal, and it was Mexico which was sequentially slightly weaker in the quarter.

You can see that under Latin America where Mexico's disclosed under the new disclosure as well. Everything else was broadly similar, in general.

I can get back to you on that as well.

Anne-Laure Bismuth

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question will be a follow-up from the line of Lars Topholm. Please go ahead.

Lars Topholm

Yes, I do have one more question, and I know you said you will not comment on 2026, and I of course fully understand and respect that. Still, you have given a 2026 EBIT margin guidance of 23%.

The fact that you don't change that in this announcement, does that implicitly mean it still stands, or is it just suspended or question mark? That's my question.

Anders Boyer

That's a good way of asking a question, Lars. No, we're not guiding for 2020 2026 yet.

When we made the guidance or the soft guidance, however you frame it, at the third-quarter announcement saying about 23% EBIT margin, that was based on a silver price of 48. Just looking at Bilal, 48.

Now it's basically $30 higher, and there will be some hit from that on an isolated basis of the higher silver price in 2026, given that we're not fully hedged. It will be less than what you can just mathematically calculate, because the hedging will be a little bit more than the 75% 75%.

Net-net, it's still a bit too early. I would also say that we, as you can see in the Q4 numbers, the cost machine is also up and running, there's, as always, an opportunity to protect the margin through looking at the cost line as well, depending on where the top line is landing.

Net-net, yeah, it's too early to guide on 2026. We'll do that on February 5.

Lars Topholm

That's perfectly clear, Anders. Thanks for answering my question.

Operator

Thank you. We do have André Thormann on the line.

Please go ahead.

André Thormann

Thank you so much. I just had one question.

Sorry for jumping in so late. I just wondered about Talisman.

I recall that it was a significant contribution to the 4% like-for-like growth in October. Can you talk a bit about how that performed in November and December?

Thanks.

Anders Boyer

Talisman continued to perform well in Q4. I think one way you can see that indirectly is when we go and we come out with the full-year announcement, you'll see that the Pandora ME is growing quite nicely, because Talisman sits as part of the Pandora ME collection, and that's quite nice growth in there.

That's driven by Talisman. It is a new design aesthetic, an addition to the brand where we are quite happy about.

Berta de Pablos-Barbier

No, yes, and I'm sorry I didn't understand the question at the beginning. That's why André has started answering as well.

Fully agree. You will be able to see that more.

Just an interesting data point as well is that what we are seeing is that in the mature markets such as Italy, we know that is actually overperforming, which is, again, another sign that in markets where there is a little bit of fatigue of some of our other products, when we bring some news, overperformed versus the rest of the market. Everything that we are talking is helping there as well.

André Thormann

All right, thanks a lot.

Operator

Next up is Alison Liger from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Your line will be unmuted.

Alison Liger

Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I just had one sort of following on from what Grace was asking, I think, at the top of the call.

In terms of the US, it's clear that the macro backdrop has been really unhelpful. Are we to take from your commentary on footfall that it was all transactions that kind of came in beneath where you were expecting, or did you see any kind of changes in terms of basket size, items per basket?

Just interested in terms of how that weaker US consumer is really translating through into the baskets you're seeing. Thank you.

Berta de Pablos-Barbier

What we've been seeing is actually traffic. Traffic really slowed down, and also important to know that despite that our traffic was lower for Pandora, we actually outperformed the overall market.

What we are seeing as well, and you will be reading the same reports that we are, is that this is not only an usual for Pandora. What we are seeing is some of our competitors announcing a soft holiday period, and we see as well consumer sentiment being lower on the accessible market socioeconomics.

What we are seeing at the moment is really traffic, and no other changes on all the other metrics.

Alison Liger

Thank you.

Berta de Pablos-Barbier

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. As no one else is lined up for questions, I will now hand it back to the speakers for any closing remarks.

Anders Boyer

Brilliant. Thank you very much everyone for taking the time today, and we'll be back to you in February.