Dellia Group AS

Dellia Group AS

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Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptAugust 28, 2026

Thea Guldbrandsøy

Welcome to Delia's presentation of the second-quarter and half-year results. My name is Thea Gullbrånsøy, VP Investor Relations, and I will later be hosting the Q&A.

Before we begin with presenting the second-quarter results, we would like to show you our new TV commercial that we have been developing in the second quarter and that we are now running in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. This is an important part of our brand building strategy as well as bringing all our products under one unified brand, the Sunshine Delights brand.

Let's have a look at the TV commercial.

Sunshine Delights, all and juicy, really dry. Sunshine Delights, all and juicy, really dry.

Thea Guldbrandsøy

With that, I would like to introduce our CEO, Jan Storli Eriksen, who will walk us through the second-quarter results.

Jan Storli Eriksen

Thank you, Thea. Welcome to the second quarter 2026 for Delia Group ASA.

Our revenue in the quarter came in at 167 million for the and for the first half year, 382 million, and that's up 36% from same period last year. Our EBIT come in at 9 million for the quarter.

For the first half year, 29 million. That was impacted with 12.5 million in financial consultants and Kirirom expenses.

Our gross margin came in as 41%, and that's up from 35% last year. That was impacted by we also we reduced airfreight, as in the second quarter.

In the first quarter this year, we had about 6 million airfreight. We didn't use that much airfreight in this quarter.

Also, we had impact by favorable currency effects. On operational highlights, we see very strong consumer demand, and we sold out 5.8 million units out of major grocery stores in the Nordics.

That's a record. We never sold that many units out of the grocery stores in in a quarter before.

We also had several commercial wins in Europe, and I will come back to that under my pan-European segment. We are on track and expect closing the Kirirom transaction as planned in September this year, also next month.

First, I would like to address why we changed the outlook for the Nordic segment to 650 million for the year down from previous 810 million. If you look on the quarterly revenue in the middle, you can see that in the first quarter in the Nordic segment, we had sales of 194 million, and that's a record up 70% year over year.

That also led to increased inventory levels among the retailers, resulting in weaker revenue in the second quarter and also into the third quarter. Inventory level is one of the reason for the that we took down the outlook.

If you go back to our first-quarter presentation, we mentioned that more brands and products are entering into the category as well, and those market conditions are also impacting our growth rate. If you look on the growth rate on the right, you can see that we have from '23, '24, and '25, we have more than 100% growth every year, three years in a row.

This year, we have an outlook of 650, and that's up 12% from the Nordic segment in '25. That was 581 million.

Overall, we see a more moderate growth rate in the Nordic. However, we're growing from a significantly larger base than before.

Despite the reduction in the revenue outlook, Nordic consumer demand remains strong. Delia are recognizing revenue when we are selling our products to the retailers.

However, to understand the long-term growth of the company, we need to look on when consumer buy the products in the store and how that trend is. Here we went back to the first quarter of 2024.

On the left side, you have million units sold out of major Nordic grocery chains. On the right side, we also look at it in terms of kg or here, ton out of retail stores all the way back down to Q1 2024.

We can see that the trend is strong. We are selling more and more units out of Nordic grocery retailers.

In the second quarter, with a record, as I mentioned, 5.8 million units, as well as in terms of ton, we sold out 792 million ton in the second quarter. Both tons and units are increasing.

That demand we can also see continuing now into the third quarter. Let's look on the category dried fruit, and Delia are driving the category in Norway, Denmark, and Finland.

In Norway, we grew the category 147%. That means that the category went from 129 million up to 148, and other brands and products, they reduced the category.

We offset that and grew it more than 100%. The same, we are growing it more than 50% in in in Finland and 50% in Denmark.

In Sweden, however, the category also grew, but more brands and products entered into the Swedish market, and they contributed to the growth in the category. Delia was just 1% of the category growth in Sweden, meaning that we lost market share in Sweden in the second quarter compared with second quarter 2025.

When we look on market share development in the Nordics, it's quite interesting to look on Sweden on that note. We saw that Sweden did not contribute that much to the growth in the category in the second quarter.

You can see here on the on the middle here with Sweden that Sweden had 36% market share in the second quarter '25, and it fell down to 28% in the fourth quarter. However, the last two quarters, Sweden have changed the trend and are now gaining market share step-by-step in Sweden.

As well as gone and that trend also goes into the third quarter, where Sweden in July took another percentage point in market share. In the same you see in Norway, Denmark, and Finland, Delia is taking market share in the last two quarters in all Nordic countries by maintaining our premium price position and keeping stable prices, meaning that other brands and products entering into the category are selling at lower and lower prices.

Our share of the value in the category remains high and increasing the last two quarters. By that, also we are providing real value to the trade.

We have high-rotating product at high value, providing good contributions to the the grocery chains. We, as we can see, that the Nordic segment becoming more mature.

The revenue growth are moderating, however, from a much larger base. Our plan is to grow the Nordic segment further.

We have four pillars how we can do that. Number one, we want, of course, to improve visibility and placements in the stores, further take the role as a category captain, keep innovating and expanding with new products.

We also have opportunity to to expand the the the sales we have outside groceries. Today, around 75% of our turnover in the Nordics is from major grocery chains, but we also have 25% turnover from other channels, for example, travel retail, convenience, and other chains.

That that in that segment is a lot of opportunities that we can develop. Fourth, the brand building.

It's critical for us that we are now establishing a brand. Not that that our Sunshine Delight brand is not only recognized, but also remembered.

Being on top of mind is a base for long-term revenue growth. Here you can see in the how we now are activating marketing in the third quarter.

We are doing TV commercials. We are on boards, in-store marketing, as well as visibility in in stores, running campaigns in all Nordic retail chains during the third quarter.

That was an update on the Nordic segment. Now, I want to turn over and shift focus to talk about the pan-European segment.

In the first half of the year, we had 20 million turnover. In the second half, we are having an outlook, we're expecting around 30 to 80 million turnover in the in the pan-European segment, where majority of the growth is coming now in the in the in the in the fourth quarter.

We are seeing then in the fourth quarter a very good and strong run rate for 2027 into 2027. We have grown the revenue in the pan-European segment from 3 million in '24, 17 million in 2025, up to now the outlook of 50 to 100 million.

The region that are driving the growth in Europe are UK, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, which we define as DACH region, as well as Benelux. We had multiple commercial wins in this quarter, and these wins is positioning Europe as an additional growth engine.

I will now go through them one by one. We run a trial in a six-week trial in Tesco in the summer.

You can see here with displays in the Tesco stores, and that resulted in record sales and high rate of sales per week of those products. The success led that Tesco now are mandatory listing these products for another three months in the shelf for a new trial in 290 stores.

If that trial also is successful, we have the further opportunity to expand with Tesco in 2027. It's very important that we now step-by-step are building this relationship with Tesco.

As Tesco is the largest grocery retailer in the UK. We also secured a mandatory listing in Sainsbury's for the fourth quarter of four of three units of our new flavored dates series, and that will be listed in 250 to 490 stores, depending on the product mix.

Morrisons is also having strong development. In Morrisons, now we are working on a secondary placements in the fresh division.

We know how important it is to get a secondary placement and how that can make our revenue go five to 10 times with that retailer, rather than just be back in the shelf. When you look on the development here from February until July, you see a very nice organic development.

This is a classical example that it takes time to build sales in new markets. The consumers don't know our product, you put it in a shelf.

When the consumers try the product one time, they will buy it again. This habit, this traction we have on repeat purchase, is making a very nice organic growth development in the UK.

We are now reaching around £35,000 per week retail sales value in Morrisons by just being in the shelf without any secondary placement. Morrisons is the fifth largest grocery retailer in the UK.

Then Germany, what is going on in Germany? We have now rolled out in 500 REWE stores during July and August.

We have hired now 15 dedicated field agents just working for Delia in Germany, servicing those 500 stores, but as well working on other stores where we do not have mandatory listing, but as well are open to list our products. Our traction now in Germany is going beyond REWE.

We also have secured 500 stores in EDEKA. EDEKA is the largest retailer in Germany.

REWE is the second one. We now have a mandatory listing in these 500 stores from this fourth quarter with EDEKA.

Yesterday, we secured also in Germany another 100 stores, a mandatory listing from September in a in a chain called HIT, which is hypermarkets, operate large formats of of grocery. In Austria, we scored Billa, 300 stores, that's the second largest grocery retailer in Austria, with mandatory listing also from November 2026.

We have good development, as we can see in Morrisons, step-by-step building up rate of sales and revenue in Switzerland in 1,000 stores with Coop, Volg, Otto's, and Lidl. The development we now see in the DACH region are major, and we are now setting up our own office in Hamburg, looking after that region with local expertise and local people with dedicated field sales.

As long as we also now have, as I wrote in my CEO letter, we have hired more people in the Nordic, we are professionalizing the Nordic organization, and that can step-by-step or gradually release time for founder to transfer skills and experience and scaled experience we have together with local salespeople in in Europe, they can get more support behind our development. We have secured proof of concept in the Netherlands with two chains, Dirk and Jan Linders, with very, very good rate of sales.

We see that Benelux region has very, very interesting growth territory. We are now setting up an office in Amsterdam.

All our efforts here we are doing now is to keep our first-mover advantage and move fast in Europe and get our growth engine up and going in Europe as fast as we can while we're still maintaining and growing and developing the Nordic market by hiring more people there. Then, can release, more founders to focusing on the growth in Europe.

This is a step-by-step development in other European markets. We do not have the same traction there as we have in in in DACH region, in UK, and in Benelux.

We are doing quite well in Italy as well. We're setting up a new office now in Italy with a new country manager.

We also just there now secured a central listing with a retailer called Moderna. We're also selling in numerous other Italian chains.

Still yet small volumes, but step-by-step, it is developing. In Spain and Portugal, the Iberia region, we are working on setting up good cooperation with local distributors.

We're also setting up an office there with a new country manager. We also are starting distribution in Slovenia with SPAR.

In And in France, we are slowly and step-by-step working on central listing processes. I want to highlight two things on our international market.

We maybe not all of you know that we have a quite large Actually, the largest office in the group now is in Shanghai with more than 25 people. We are not only looking at China like our operation and supply chain center.

We also look like that as a market center. China is an important market for the group, and we have hired a retail sales manager focusing on grocery distribution in China.

That we see a lot of potential in that. We are close to the factory, we have all operations there, and we know that, for example, mango is a very popular fruit in China.

Finally, we secured our trademark registration in the US, and we spent a lot of time working on that. This shows that we believe that our largest market is yet to be developed.

We're not starting now full throttle in the US. Our focus now is to make European come up to break-even and contribute positively to our EBIT from the first quarter.

Then once we both have Europe and Nordic all contributing to the EBIT, we can start focusing more much more on leverage our US trademark registration. As I mentioned, finally, we are now in September on track to close the Kirirom transaction.

I want to tell a little bit about Kirirom here. Here you can see Kirirom's revenue development.

From 2024, we had $17 million. That grew to $38 million in '25.

This year, in 2026, we have an outlook for $50 million turnover with Kirirom. The green marks Delia revenue with Kirirom, which is now going to become internal revenue in the group.

The gray is external private label manufacturing. You can see that from 2025, Kirirom grew their private label division from $12 million to more than $24 million expected turnover in 2026.

That private label division addressing a global dried mango market, and our industrial insight and industrial report are estimating that market to be approximately $3 billion in 2031 with a compound annual growth rate of 8%. We are actually addressing a private label growing demand for dried mango.

Kirirom is much more than that. Our factory is located in Cambodia just outside Phnom Penh, where we have access to agriculture's resources, which enable us to have a lot of opportunities for innovating new products.

Kirirom is a highly technical factory with a lot of technologies, a lot of certification. If we look on this holistically, we have the a product can be innovated in our food innovation lab in Oslo, with support with equipment, for example, through our Shanghai office.

It then can be produced at at Kirirom, and we're changing that now into becoming a diversified snacking production platform, where all the products produced there then are commercialized through our sales offices internationally. This is putting Kirirom in at the heart in Delia's integrated and scalable business model.

With that, I would like to welcome our CFO to look on our financial performance in the second quarter of 2026. Thank you.

Sindre Li

Thank you. Thank you, Jan.

We'll now look at the financial performance for the quarter and half year of '26. Start with the Delia's revenue.

Total revenue for the second quarter ended at 167.1 million, up 5.4% from 158.5 million in Q2 '25. Year-to-date, we are at 381.5 million, up 36.2% from 280.1 million.

Norway grew 8% to 46.4 million and Denmark, 19% to 38.9 million. Finland was up 34.3% to 12.3 million.

Sweden is the exception this quarter, down 25.4% to 46.4 million against a very strong comparable quarter last year. Year-to-date, Sweden is still marginally up at 2.5%.

Outside the Nordic, the growth continues. Pan-Europe grew from 3.4 to 9.8 million and Asia, from 8.1 to 13.4 million.

Our gross profit margin increased to 41.1% in Q2 '26 from 35.1% in Q2 '25. Year-to-date, we are at 36.9%, up from 33.1%.

Currency have a positive impact this quarter. There is a delay of roughly four to five months from purchase of the inventory to when the US dollar rate reaches COGS.

The goods were were sold this quarter were purchased at a weaker US dollar rate we've seen earlier in the year. We have had 4.2 million in cost due to airfreight last year in Q2 '25, but none this quarter.

We also had 6 million airfreight cost in Q1 this year. One comment on the margin level.

A gross profit of 41.1% is high for a single quarter, and the year-to-date figure of 36.9% is the better reference. Currency remains supportive, but promotional activity to normalize inventory level will provide some offset.

The EBIT margin came in at 5.3% in the quarter against 13.1% in Q2 '25. Year-to-date, we are at 7.7% compared to 13% last year.

Gross margin improved, the decline comes entirely from OPEX and payroll. Gross profit grew 13.1 million in the quarter, while other operating expenses increased 17.1 million and payroll 7.6 million.

A large share of the OPEX is sales-driven and will grow with revenue and brand investment. The remainder is more fixed in nature, and that is where we are investing in this year, mainly through payroll as we add headcounts.

We also carry consultancy costs in '26 that we expect to come down as work moves in-house. Then for the balance sheet, we see total assets at the end of the half are 533.2 million down from 597.4 million at year-end last year.

Non-current assets increased to 26.2 million, and essentially all of it is the right-of-use asset from the extended office premises in Oslo. Current assets came down to 507 million.

Two things drives that. The dividend paid in the first quarter and a reduction in trade receivable during the second quarter.

Equity is 380.1 million. Against year-end, it is down 7 million.

We paid a dividend of 24.8 million and earned 23.2 million as a net income in the first half. Total liabilities are down from 210.2 to 153.1 million.

We have reduced our use of supplier financing and factoring. Operating cash flow was positive 14.1 million in the quarter and positive 5.4 million year-to-date.

The main working capital driver is trade receivable, which is down 24.3 million year-to-date. We entered into the new factoring agreement with Nordea in Q1, selling receivables rather than borrowing against them.

You now see that that effect on both side of the balance sheet. Financing used was 48.8 million for the half year, mainly explained by the dividend of 24.8 million and 17.7 million net reduction in factoring.

Thank you, and I will now give the word back to Jan for key takeaways.

Jan Storli Eriksen

Thank you, Sindre, for a very good update on the financials. I would like now I would like to summarize the key takeaways from the second quarter.

Number one, we see a very strong consumer demand, record sales, as I mentioned, 5.8 million units sold out of the major grocery stores in the Nordics. We're continuing to gaining market share in the last two quarters in all Nordic markets.

I'm particularly proud of the development in Sweden, where they now are changed the narrative and start growing market shares in Sweden and by maintaining stable prices and a premium position on our products in the market. We revised down the outlook in the Nordics down to 650 million due to inventory levels as well as market conditions.

We expect a more moderate growth, however, on a significantly larger base that we have developed over the past three years in the Nordics. 2026 is an investment year.

We are doing investments this year to pay off for 2027, and we expect those results to come already from the first quarter next year. Europe is developing into our next growth engine, and that's driven mainly with a strong progress we now have in in the DACH region, in UK, and Benelux.

Finally, we are integrating now Kirirom and closing the transaction, and Kirirom will then become the heart of Delia's integrated and scalable business model. I thank you so much for your time to to review this, and we now will revert over to our Q&A session.

Thank you.

Thea Guldbrandsøy

Thank you, Jan and Sindre. We have received we've received a few questions.

Just start with the first one. Sell-out was up 29% in Q2, while reported revenue grew only 5.4%.

Can you quantify how much of this gap was caused by inventory destocking at customers and distributors, particularly in the Nordics? Where do you see customer inventory levels today compared with a year ago?

Dag Skipperud Johansen

As Jan said in the presentation, we had a record sales in tonnage in Q2, and the price per kilo is also stable. I will say that 100% of the gap can be explained by the stocking situation at the retailers.

Thea Guldbrandsøy

Thank you, deg. Next question.

Can you give us more detail on the underlying sales development in the Nordics versus the UK and Germany in Q2? Are you seeing the same strong sell-out momentum across these markets?

Or is the growth increasingly coming from the UK and Germany?

Jan Storli Eriksen

I'll go back a little bit to what I said in the presentation. When you're new in the market, it takes time to develop sales.

The consumer do not know our brand or our products. They are on the shelf.

What we see is when the consumer buy the product one time, they keep buying it again. We have a very strong repeat purchase.

That is very obvious when you look on the graph I explained under Morrisons from February last year to July now, where you see a 700% increase in retail sales value out of stores organically driven by repeat purchase. The same pattern we Where we are now in Europe are on early stage, and we see the same pattern and the same trend and similar rate of sales out of stores per week as we were when we started in the Nordics.

Thea Guldbrandsøy

Thank you, Jan. Next question.

With Tesco, Sainsbury's, REWE, EDEKA, and HIT now adding significant distribution, when should we expect these listings to become material contributors to revenue? Should we expect a meaningful acceleration in H2 '26, or is the most of the impact expected from 2027?

Jan Storli Eriksen

If we go back to the We gave quite precise revenue outlook for the pan-European segment. We had 20 million sales in the pan-European segment in in in the first half of the year, and then we are expecting the rest to come in in the second half between 30 to 80.

We have a total outlook for the for the pan-European segment between 50 to 100 million. We make a range here because it's it's a little bit difficult to predict exactly how that are scaling up.

We expect the most impact, of course, to come from 2027, as you have an accelerating development. You are building up the market.

You're making consumers become familiar with new products and new brands and start building on repeat purchase, as well as more and more distribution. It's all about building distribution in Europe right now, just like we started in the Nordics.

Thea Guldbrandsøy

You have highlighted that the financial benefits of the investments and Kirirom should become increasingly visible from 2027. What should investors expect in terms of operating leverage and EBIT margin development in 2027 as revenue scales?

Jan Storli Eriksen

There's a lot of impacts in 2027. The investments we are making now in 2026 is to build the the pathway for return in 2027 and continued growth.

I can summarize shortly. Kirirom will impact in '27, full impact of that when the company is integrated.

We are moving production in-house. We have quite much external production, we can move it in-house at Kirirom.

That provides benefits. Europe is coming up and approaching a break-even level, Europe from '27 can contribute positively to EBIT rather than reduce EBIT.

We're also building up a an organization as well, and that organization can then take over and phase out consultants. We have a period now where a double cost.

We are building organization as well as having the consultants and we are in transfer. When that consultants can be phased out and as well as we get a larger organization, we can better manage and handle all the new customers that we have taken on board.

Plus, of course, the effect of more medium to long-term effect of of increasing investments in the brand.

Thea Guldbrandsøy

Next question on the strategic review. Why do a strategic review now?

Shouldn't you focus on operations?

Jan Storli Eriksen

The strategic review is is the board, and that's the board's job to always look on strategic review to optimize the value for shareholders. The management are focusing 100% on operation.

We don't We want to focus on operation, that's what we do.

Thea Guldbrandsøy

Thank you. Next question.

Your Nordic guidance implies Nordic sales down 2% year over year in H2. Does that also mean you expect sales out of stores in H2 to be down?

Dag Skipperud Johansen

No. We expect the sales in in in H2 to to be good out of store.

As we said a couple of times today, we built inventory in Q1 that in the stores in the at the retailers that's gradually going down. At the same time, we're supplying them every week with new with new products.

The sum of that should give Delia a good H2 as well out of store.

Thea Guldbrandsøy

Thank you. Gross margin is very strong.

Is the average of Q1, Q2 a fair assumption going forward, excluding Kirirom?

Sindre Li

Yes, so the gross margin in Q2 was was high, 41.1, the year-to-date gross margin of 36.9 is a better reference next quarter, so that the currency looks supportive, but we're also planning lots of campaigns as part of optimizing our inventory, which will be an offset, so yeah, offsetting it a little bit down. Mhm.

Thea Guldbrandsøy

Thank you. Regarding your expansion in Europe and the UK, what shelf space are you securing, and how do you expect it to develop?

Jan Storli Eriksen

When you start in new markets, it's difficult to to start with the best shelf shelf space in the stores. Normally, you start a little bit back in the store or you have like a fixed shelf space.

That's also one of the reason why it takes time to build up sales. We know how important it is to develop impulse location, secondary placements in the store.

That's an ongoing work. To build all that up take time.

Even in the Nordic, we are not done. Even here, we've worked here for four, five years, there's so much we can work on as well here in the Nordics.

Of course, when you're brand-new in Europe, it takes even longer time to build that up. I mentioned that as one of the ways in my presentation, how can we grow the Nordics forward.

Grow the Nordic forward, it's also very important to focus on visibility and shelf space. We see when we get those secondary placements, we can increase sales five to 10 times from the levels we have time from the levels we start with, but it takes time to build that up.

Thea Guldbrandsøy

Thank you. Then there's another question on the strategic review.

Why run a process now on the back of the current distressed share price levels?

Jan Storli Eriksen

We we have a we have a we have a a notice on that to the market. We do not have any more comments on the and what is said in that notice.

If something is coming up, if new things happen, of course, we will update the market and all shareholders, but there is no new things to to notify or update on right now.

Thea Guldbrandsøy

Thank you. I think that was was all the questions.

I think we can round off the Q&A.

Jan Storli Eriksen

Thank you so much for the presentation and the time from everybody taking time to listen to us.