There we go. It's welcome everyone to Lyko Group's presentation of the second quarter.

We're happy to share a short presentation with our CEO Rickard Lyko and our CFO Ylva Norlén. The call will be recorded and you could find it on our website and in the Quartr app.

With that said, I leave the floor to Rickard.

Thank you, Tom, and welcome everyone. Jump into the PowerPoint so we can go into the first slide.

We are having a good result. We are growing about 8.6% this quarter and reaching the 1 billion milestone.

We are also seeing that we have our second highest EBIT and 71% gross since last year, which end up with 54 million. We see that the gross margin is 43.5%, driven by the price discipline and the focusing on the profitability, but also the focusing on our profitable market, which are the one standing behind the growth.

Something that also are helping is our own brands, and our own brands growth in the quarter, which also are 23.4% and is now 88 million in the quarter. We are also reaching the 4 billion milestone in the 12 months period.

We have also been very much focusing this quarter on the cost saving program, and we have also come to completion on that on the personal cost side of it, but still are also in progress as planned for the rolling 12 months to reach the 100 million. That will also a lot in front of us with the bigger quarters to come.

We're seeing that the strategy starting delivering results, better cost control, stable margin, and visible effect gains. Profitability prioritization is also continuous in a challenging market.

We see that we still have high competition both here in Sweden in the Nordics, nothing has changed there, but we also seeing that we can manage that. We are also in an execution phase with the cost saving program, a more efficient organization, it's also good to see that the whole organization have a lot of focusing on that side, but we still can deliver.

Also the stabilization of the logistic. We know that we're going reach numbers in the Q3 where we have a lot of problems with the logistic last year in the go live with the new automation.

We see also that a strong foundation for future grow in community and own brands, and also that we have a stronghold here in the Nordics. Our own brands is something that we are building for the long run.

We see a good growth in the quarter, both for the work that has been done for quite some time, but also that the stock levels and new launches of products is starting to giving results. This is something that we are building for the long time.

It takes time, a lot of the result we see now is initiatives that we took 2 to 3 years ago. That will keep hopefully continuous because we have a lot of new launches in all the brands that we are handling here.

We also opened two new stores. One in Charlottenberg is in the border to Norway, and the Kalmar opening, which Kalmar is the new concept.

Now we have two stores in the new concept, Täby and Kalmar, and we are really seeing that they are working as we hope for, and they are really helping us building the brand awareness, but also helping us building the own brands when we have a bigger footprint than we had before. We also know that our community is something that are quite unique for us, and that's something we are building also for the long run, but also helping us to hold a unique position when we are talking with our suppliers and the brands that they are driven.

They are there for building the beauty brands, and we are really helping them in the community with that, creating unique content with real people that are adding that to daily. We have also starting to pay for the creators at the platform, and that's also we're seeing working very well.

Now we're adding more creators to that platform. That is also something that we are building really for the long run, but also starting to helping us a lot now.

We also launched two new brands. We have launched a lot more brands, but the biggest one is Natasha Denona, which has been exclusive with Sephora before, and Morphe is also helping us building the position in the makeup, which we know is super important in that categories we are operating in the beauty because a lot of the beauty segments start with makeup.

That is really helping when we getting those brands on board, and they are also available in our stores. The automation, I'm here at Vansbro at the warehouse, and that's working very well now.

We are operating and starting to keep on efficient, make it more and more efficient, but I will say we are almost on the full swing on it now. We also seeing the automation with the robot picking is working very well.

Here we know that we can add more robots as we go. Right now we have three of those picking orders and that are also keep on adding up months after months because that's the good part of the automation is when it learns how to pick, it will keep on operating it and keep on make it more efficient.

Now I will hand over to Ylva.

Thank you, Rickard. I will go through the results for Q2 in a little bit more detail.

Starting with the net sales for the group, we had a really strong sales increase in the quarter, 8.6%, amounting to 1 billion 21 million. As Rickard said, this is an important milestone.

It's the first quarter that we have been beyond 1 billion that is not a Q4 quarter. Big celebrations.

In local currencies, the growth was 7.2%. Another milestone passed is also that we passed the 4 billion mark now as a business, which is also great news.

This growth was enabled through successful campaign execution mainly and new stores. It's also backed up by really strong developments in Sweden and Norway especially.

Looking at the gross margin, we are super pleased that we are on the same level as Q2 last year, which was very strong. This gross margin is higher than all quarters of 2025.

What's behind the gross margin is strong price discipline. We've also have higher supplier contributions compared to last year, and the good growth within the own brands is also helping here.

Super pleased with this result. Looking at the cost side, if we look at the other external costs, we can see that we are significantly lower now as a share of sales compared to the same quarter last year.

This is primarily driven by lower freight costs and also lower marketing investments in the quarter. We also have a one-off cost weighing down this result.

It's almost 1 million taken in relation to closing down the [Viks?] Trosa factory.

Then when we look at the personnel side as a share of sales, we are down almost 1 percentage unit compared to the quarter last year. However, the cost levels are almost level to 2025.

This is due to the fact that most people who were affected by the cost saving program still worked majority of Q3. Of course, we also had factors like new stores, salary revisions, and also more employees that joined the company during autumn 2025 compared to the spring last year.

Here we also have a positive one-off effect of 1.3 million as we released some of the restructuring provision in this quarter. Just a few more words on the cost saving program, a little bit of a recap.

The objective with the program was to save 100 million SEK in the period from February to January 2027. The majority of the cost saving will come from the reduction in the personnel side, primarily white collar organization.

We have during spring had the objective to form a new organizational structure and also reviewing and moderating the operating model for the company. The status right now, we have identified 100 million in savings, and this will be realized gradually over the coming period.

We can see some of the effects of course already now in Q2. As we've also previously announced, the personnel part of the program is finished as of June.

We now see that the total one-off costs for the program totals at 21 million SEK. The biggest effects from this will be in Q4 and onwards.

Gradual realizations of these savings. I know this has been appreciated in previous Q calls, and since we haven't had big one-off costs previously within the group, we would just like to give more detail here on how this has been each quarter and what type of cost we are seeing.

In total now rolling 12, we had 40 million SEK in one-off costs if we add up the second half of 2025 and first half of 2026. In this quarter, we had 0.5 million one-off effect.

Then coming to the EBIT of the group, this is the second most profitable quarter ever for Lyko. It's 55 54 million and corresponds to a margin of 5.3%.

There are many underlying reasons to this result, but mainly it comes from higher of course sales growth and also strong gross margin, but also from the effects of the cost saving program. If we look into our segments, the segment Retail grew by 8.7% and also passed the 1 billion sales mark with 1 billion 1 million.

The increase is mainly attributed to Sweden and Norway, super strong performance. Looking into profitability here, we see that the margin for the Retail segment was 11.6% and delivered 116 million to the group.

Then the Group Functions and other, here we have a selling of 20 million, and this is the external production from our factory and also the 3 3PL logistics that we handle in the Vansbro warehouse. So 20 million, 8.3% growth from last year.

Then looking into the cost side for Group Functions, we are at 62 million, quite level with what it's been for the past 3 to 4 years. This is of course something to be expected to shrink in the coming quarters.

Lastly, a few words on the investment side and cash flow. We have, as previously communicated, no bigger CapEx investments underway.

We have approximately 70 million planned in spend for 2026, and in this quarter it was 25. We opened the two stores in Q2, and we maintained the appetite to open more.

Stock levels were at 537 million, which is steady level that we have been on for almost 4 years now. Yet again, we managed to secure higher selling with improved stock-to-sales ratios, now at 13.4% compared to we were up at almost 18% a few years ago.

This is super strong development. Cash was at 50 million SEK at the last day of the quarter.

Yes, and then lastly, I would like to add a few words on the announcement that went out this morning. I have chosen to resign from the Lyko Group as I've accepted another exciting opportunity, but will remain here at the company until February next year.

It feels really good to be able to be here and continue the 2026 delivery of results.

We thank Ylva for really have been developing the financial part and Lyko in total since she entered like 2 years ago or something. We are thankful for that.

Now we're handing over to questions, right?

Yes. Please raise your hands when you have questions.

We go over to Fredrik Ivarsson. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning all.

This is on behalf of Benjamin. Sorry, I've been jumping a little bit back and forth here, maybe you already have answered this question.

On the 100 million savings that you guide for, how much of those will be visible in H2? When is the full run rate reached?

What we have communicated is that we will save the 100 million until the end of January 2027. The pace of course will depend a little bit on the commercial success in the third and fourth quarter, since for instance freight savings are dependent on order volumes, etc.

We have not sort of broken it down more per quarter, as we tend to not guide going forward. The comments that were on that is what we will share.

The savings will come gradually over the quarters, but especially in Q4.

Good. Thanks.

Second one on marketing spend that fell to 8.5% of revenue without any impact on performance, it sounds like. Is this a new sort of structural level, you believe, or do you think this will ramp up in H2?

We haven't guided exactly where the level should be. We have talked about that we want to keep on investing in the market side, because that are driving a lot of our growth.

It can go up and down in between quarters and so on. I think this is on the lower half of that, and we have said up to about 10%, but we will see exactly where that landed.

Part of it is also performance driven, which also makes a difference when we are growing in our more bigger markets than our newer market.

Perfect. That's all.

Thank you.

Thank for that, Fredrik. We go over to Magnus Roman, SB1 Markets.

Yes, Magnus Råman here. Thank you.

Firstly on sort of the top-line growth momentum improving here in Q2 relative Q1. Perhaps a bit of that of course is FX translation turning from headwind to tailwind in this quarter and maybe a little bit easier comp.

Speaking of comps, if we look into Q3 and Q4, can you elaborate a little bit about how the comps look there, and what we should keep in mind as relates to these coming quarters?

I think what we said last year on the quarter three, we had a lot of issues with the go live with the automation, which effect both outbound and inbound, which also mean that we have less assortment-wise, and it's also cost us a lot to delivering more orders. Then we were building that up under the Q4, but we have a good Black Friday top-line-wise.

There we will reach meeting easier top-line numbers in Q3 and harder in Q4. Also profitable-wise, we had tough both Q3 and Q4 in comparable what we did the year before that.

That's very clear and helpful. Thank you.

Then also just one a little bit more detail perhaps, but on the D&A costs up here just about 21 million year-on-year. Is it correct that it's 12.5 of this increase relates to you now starting to depreciate the new automation investment?

If so, the residual 8 or 9, can you elaborate a little bit of where they come from?

Yes, depreciation on the warehouse commenced in March, and it's 4.33 million per month. The remaining is attributed to tech systems, especially our new order management system and also our new search engine that was launched during spring.

Great, great. Maybe just final also ask about your view of your balance sheet now as it's improved quite a bit sequentially from Q1 to Q2.

You do not elaborate on your leverage ratio. You don't write them out in the report adjusting for IFRS 16, the gearing multiples.

It has come down at least on my calculations substantially from Q1 to Q2. Both täljare and nämnare, to speak, have all been altered here.

As you look ahead now into the second half of this year, and you already alluded to, Rickard, the comparisons up and down on top line, but soft on profitability in both coming quarters, how do you think about your balance sheet and the gearing? Is this an area that you've seen you need to prioritize still in the second half, to get the gearing down?

We have a plan. We amortize as of April, and we definitely have a plan to deliver a profitable 2026.

I think if you add all that together, we should be sort of in a good plan.

All right, that sounds confident. Thank you for that.

Thank you. Then we go over to Kristian Smolle, Pareto.

Hi guys. Thank you for taking my question.

Two questions from me here. Regarding the reported retail growth of 8.7%, which you said is boosted by the new store openings, could you maybe give us an indication of what the underlying like-for-like growth is here for the existing stores in the quarter?

The non-comparable stores drove roughly 2 percentage points of that growth. That's the only answer we have prepared on that question.

Perfect. Thank you.

Then regarding the solid development in your own brands, could you maybe describe a bit on what categories or products or what drove this solid growth here?

I would say it's a mix of all the brands. We are still the strongest in haircare since the Waterclouds is our biggest brand as we communicated the last quarter, but also seeing good growth in the By Lyko, which is the second biggest, where is also very broad.

It's on all the categories. I will say it's a mix of everything in there.

Perfect. That was all from me.

Thank you.

Do we have any more questions from the audience? Please raise your hands.

Any other questions from Magnus, Fredrik, or Kristian?

All clear. Thank you for good presentation.

Great. If there's nothing more, we would like to wish everyone a happy summer, great vacation, put on the sunscreen, and see you in October again.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Bye.