Good morning, and welcome to Duell's first half 2026 financial report's webcast. We have today here presenting the report Tomi Virtanen, CEO, and Caj Malmsten, CFO, and my name is Pellervo Hämäläinen from Investor Relations.

During the webcast, there's opportunity to send questions in Finnish and English via chat, and at the end of the webcast, we come back with the questions and answers session. I think we are ready to move on.

Gentlemen, stage is yours.

Thank you, Pellervo. Happy to be here.

As said, my name is Tomi Virtanen. I'm the new CEO of Duell Corporation.

Good morning, everybody. Second quarter was very challenging in terms of the market conditions, as it has been before, but the headwind clearly continued during the second quarter, which is our true winter season.

That means that traditionally the majority of the businesses is happening in Nordics in a snow segment. When we look at our financials, the net sales and profitability were both below the previous year level.

However, we improved in networking capital management, less inventories. When we look at the markets and product categories, the market uncertainty continued, and particularly the weak consumer confidence due to the geopolitical situation was clearly visible in our business.

Also, the negative impact of France situation, i.e. the brand portfolio changes that have happened before, are burdening our result.

We did some operational efficiency activities, including the warehouse consolidations in Nordics and France, successfully. If we look at the operational highlights for the second quarter, as said, we consolidated the warehouses.

Now the total number of warehouses is five where we can efficiently serve our customer base in our target markets. We have one in Finland instead of two what we used to have, we have one in Sweden, one in France where we used to have two warehouses, and we have one in UK, and one in Netherlands.

Basically, from these warehouses, we can serve our customers all over the Europe. On a brand side, we successfully signed the contract with the Quad Lock, which is, of course, a sign of our trustworthiness as a partner and our capabilities in Nordics.

In Finland, Sweden, and Norway, Quad Lock is a new member in our portfolio, and we highly appreciate the trust that Quad Lock has given us to address these markets. In the beginning of the year, there are motorcycle fairs, and we saw some slightly higher consumer activity there.

Now when the summer season is approaching, we are seeing some reinvigorating behavior in this domain. However, of course, overall, the motorcycle park remains where it has been.

Also, our UK operations continue to deliver good results, both in terms of the top line and profitability. Looking at the key figures in second quarter, clearly, a weaker performance that we were expecting due to the challenging market conditions.

We see the year-on-year net sales development declining €0.5 million, now being €28.8 million. On a gross margin side, we also see a decline, which is partly explained by the situation with the winter, i.e.

the snow category where we tend to have a better gross margin level. The product mix is clearly impacting the profitability.

Of course, the challenges related to France and a brand portfolio there. The adjusted EBITA €0.4 million, down from last year 1.1.

Adjusted EBITA margin, 1.2% from 3.9 year-on-year. Looking at the first half result as a whole, the net sales is clearly down, as well as the gross margin and EBITA, as well with the previously mentioned reasons.

Net debt is clearly lower than it used to be, which is, of course, a positive news, €25.5 million compared to the last year 29.3, leverage being 5.4, and the net cash flow from operating activities, -€4.1 million. With this, I let Kai to explain more about the financials.

Thank you, Tomi. Let let me open up a little bit more the numbers, starting from the revenue side.

As as you all remember, we had a very weak quarter one. Quarter two, a little bit better, but we we could not catch the the gap we created from quarter one, the gap increased a little bit.

On half-year result, we are 6%, 6.6% down. As Tomi said, here here we have have the the main main part are coming from the decline in France sales and and weak winter, and also in general rather soft demand.

Looking then at the split, where do we sell, we can see it's pretty stable compared to last year independently whether we look on the quarter two alone or half-year result. So 51/49, 51 to Nordics, 49 to Central Europe, pretty stable.

Here we also have can see the own brand sales for the second quarter, 21% compared to 20, and for the half year, a little bit bigger, 23%. If we look then own brand sales in terms of euros, it's more or less same level as in the past.

It's only increasing when when the total sales is less than a year ago. As as we before had in the previous sessions also had said that the online sales is slowly growing, and we can see now for the half year about 30%, 31%.

All all in all, Q2 a little bit better, but still a long long way to go, far behind our expectations. This, of course, gives a direct impact on the profitability, with lower sales.

Also the adjusted EBITA goes down, for the quarter, €0.4 million or or 69% down compared to year year back where we had €1.1 million. Also with with the weak quarter one, we now just on the half-year level are slightly positive, €0.2 million, which where we have a big delta to to last year where we had €1.8 million, a lot lot less.

Here here we can start from the gross margin. We have have a lower gross margin now, and I I would say we have a few components here.

We have as written here the product mix when with a with a weaker winter it's filled up with with other types of products, and also a combination then of of sell-out of winter products into towards end of the quarter two, bring bringing the margin levels down. On the OPEX side, when we compare it to to sales, we see an increase from last year, both on the quarter two and and the half year.

Looking at the percentage, it's increase due to the fact that we have lower lower sales. Looking on a broader perspective, here here we have take taken the actions with the warehouses with more more in France, and now we finally got completed the Tampere move in Finland in in March.

On in these figures, only a small small portion can so far be seen in the numbers. The improvement should start to come from going forward from this this moment on.

The this gives, as I said, a weak weak profitability. What then we can be more more happy with is the improvement on the on the net working capital.

We have put a lot of efforts in improving the net working capital, and we are are putting a lot going forward also. Here we can see especially, I would say, on the big component, the inventory side, we managed to get it down to €49.4 million compared to 50 million, 50.2 a year back.

It's not not a huge decrease, but taking into consideration the the weak winter season we we had, which naturally leave a little bit left in stock, which a normal winter should should have taken care of. Not only on on the inventory side, we have good development also on the other components.

Receivables, here here we are improving all all the time the the so-to-say credit management activities, and and so in in order to improve that part of the net working capital. Then on on the payables side, the work continues, as said, that improving, slowly but surely, payment supplier payment terms.

All all in all, a €4.3 million improvement compared to a year back. Still we have then with due to the lower sales, the the inventory-to-LTM sales goes up to 40% where where we have clear targets and plans to to take take it down and come closer to to 35, 30 somewhere in the future.

Then on the financial position, with with a weak result, we we pretty fast get get an increased leverage level, increased to 5.4 compared to 4 a year back back. If we open up this a little bit, so as I said, the big component affecting is is the low lower profitability.

Debt repayments continued as planned, we are paying back the the loans. We have an improved cash flow profile, still -€4.1, but it's a €5 million improvement compared to to last year.

Here here the main component is the improved net working capital. We have have to keep in mind at this point of the of the year we have, to say, the the biggest burden to our balance sheet with summer products coming in to be delivered then quarter three, quarter four, heavy burden on balance sheet.

Can also be seen in in the net cash reserves, €0.9 million. On on the other hand, we we have an unused RCF facility of around 10 10 million.

Improvements needed, but still working net working capital improvements helps a lot here. With this, I give back to you, Tomi.

Thank you, Kai. Based on now what we presented, as well as the heavy work what we have done in terms of the scenarios how this fiscal year ending by end of August is looking like, we are adjusting our guidance.

We need to remember that we have already earlier indicated the challenges in France, and now it's obvious that for fiscal year, the situation is even more critical than we earlier expected. The new guidance for the financial year of '26 is that the consumer sentiment remains fragile and uncertainty persists in the market.

We expect that the market environment remains suppressed during 2026 financial year, and our performance in France continues to be weak during this period, as well as the Nordic winter season sales was low. Therefore, we expect the organic net sales to be around €150 million, and we expect the adjusted EBITA to be around €2 million.

In addition, we are reengineering of our supply chain operations, including inventory optimization, inventory cleanups as well, and this will have a nonrecurring negative impact €2 to €3 million on the full year's result. What is the way going forward?

That is the most important thing. In a shorter term, we have decided three important focus areas where we will have a major impact as soon as possible.

Our home market in Nordics. Even though the market remains flat, we believe that we can strengthen our market position, particularly growing in Norway, and in bicycle category in Sweden.

We have very good brands, we are introducing new brands, we have impeccable product management and sales organization knowing our customers very well and capable to serve the customers all the way to their demand. Moving the bicycle warehouse from Tampere partly to Mustasaari and partly to Tranås will enable better availability, shorter delivery times in Sweden as well.

Then going to the France, we are restoring the profitable growth in France. By end of March, Jean-Marc Authmann started as a new general manager for Duell France.

Jean-Marc is bringing decades of experience in this business and very good understanding of the customer demand and customer perception in French market. We are strengthening the brand portfolio in France.

Very soon we are going to publish good news regarding the new brand elements in France, and Jean-Marc is putting the whole team to work together under his leadership with the very focused service plan and concentrating where we are the best, i.e. serving our customers.

On a third topic, we are strengthening the financial position even more with the networking capital management and positive cash flow. What does it mean in practice?

As Kai already indicated, we have reduced our inventories. We continue to doing so, not only the warehouse locations, but the inventory levels.

The way to do so is that we are seeking for the sources closer to our main markets. With our very rich brand portfolio, many of our brands are having the capability not only to deliver from the Far East, but also in Europe.

When we are selecting then the choice in closer to our market, we can ensure that the lead time is shorter, and this enables that we can go with the smaller lot sizes and more frequent replenishing. As we are in a very seasonal business, the very important thing is the timing.

We need to be very good in timing so that the purchases, the deliveries inbound are coming exactly on the right time, before the season start, before the customers need the goods, but not too much far ahead. The timing and the rhythm of the purchasing is a absolutely mandatory thing for our success.

We are also taking, as mentioned, when reengineering the supply chain, these once-off activities of cleaning all the places from the obsolete material and also rigorously looking for the slow-multi-moving items. Partly we need to also divest the portfolio for the items that are not profitable, and also then, of course, taking the activities on the sales side that everything what we have in our portfolio is actually moving.

These are the key things we believe that will help particularly when we are approaching the next fiscal year starting in September. We need to understand, coming back to our guidance, that, for example, these activities related to France, they will take some time, even though we have an excellent new general manager now on board.

As a reminder of our business, we are here to serve our customers. We have very rich portfolio.

I believe that in our target markets, we have the best possible offering for our customers. We have in-depth knowledge with our organization, with our product management and salespeople, a lot of that with decades of experience, tacit knowledge about the products that our customers cannot get anywhere else than from us.

We are ready to serve, and we are serving our customers up to our best capacity, and also being the one-stop shop in most of the cases so they can really get the very enriched portfolio from us. We are very proud of our brands that we are representing, and everything what we are doing is with the good cooperation with the brands, and of course, the ultimate goal, to serve our customers.

As a summary, the market uncertainty and weak consumer confidence is continuing due to the geopolitical factors and the global climate change and many other things that we cannot influence, and we are not concentrating on those. We are concentrating on the things that we can change.

In the past, we have seen now these brand portfolio changes in France negatively contributing to our financials, but now we are putting things back on track. We are strengthening our market position in Nordics, we are restoring our profitable growth in France, and we are improving our networking capital management and cash flow.

Thank you.

Very good. We are ready now then to move to the questions and answers session.

I think we could start from the markets, divide the Central Europe or Europe and the Nordics. How do you see that we have managed in the Nordic countries?

Have we maintained our market share, or has there been more competition, and how do you see, is there some pressure?

Of course, in a healthy market, there is always competition, and competition is always increasing, no question about it. How do we see is that the market is relatively flat, i.e.

that overall demand is not increasing, but of course, there are new players coming into the market, new brands, and we need to be every day better to serve our customers in order that we can keep our market position. All in all, we believe that we have sustained our position here, and with the obvious reasons what I mentioned earlier, we believe that we continue to do so in the future as well.

What about the European countries? Of course, they are different markets and there are different dynamics, of course, we have talked a lot about France, but let's say about the other countries, how is it going?

In UK, we have very sustainable performance. I'm very proud of our British team, and I salute the good work that have been done consistently there, both in terms of the top line and profitability.

I strongly believe it continues growing, also a challenging market, but I believe that we can gain market share. As said, I believe that we have touched the France already a lot.

Then looking for the Central Europe, from the Netherlands warehouse, we are serving Benelux countries, Germany, Eastern Europe. The growth we are seeing is mainly in Eastern Europe.

For example, the motorcycle park in Poland is growing unlike in most of the European countries, and of course, we believe that we can grow with the market, but also that in a certain segments that we can grow faster than the market, and that's part of our strategy as well.

Okay. Good.

Now when the, let's say, our biggest quarter is already ongoing here, have we already got the products in and products out for the customers, or are there delays like we had last year?

The situation in that sense is very good. We have done record days in our picking and packing in our Tranås and Mustasaari warehouses, and that, of course, is mandatory in order to serve the customers.

We all know that the season started in Nordics early in March for the summer products, I've seen motorcycles going on the roads already in early, early March, not only in a capital area, but also elsewhere in Finland. That is, of course, a good thing, and we believe that we have a good chance for making a good season.

Okay. I think we could still come back to the France operations.

How confident you are that we are kind of rebuilding the case again, and have we lost a lot of market share, and is it only due to the brand changes?

That is a fact that we have lost market share, and that cannot be changed. I'm 100% confident that with the new leadership, with the Jean-Marc Authmann, we will gain a lot back, and very soon.

Partly, the explanation is related with the brands we lost, but partly it's also how to organize and keep the momentum, the clock speed of the whole organization in the things that matters the most, i.e. serving our customers, doing the sales activities, giving the right support.

I've already witnessed with my own eyes the change now when Jean-Marc started, and I'm confident that this will bring us a beautiful journey in France. However, we need to keep in mind that things take a little bit time, talking about this fiscal year, which is already ending in August, we need to be realistic what can be achieved still this fiscal year and what goes beyond.

I believe that now we are building the success for the future for the remaining part of the year.

Okay. Very good.

Then there's a question related to France and, let's say, the negative impact to our profitability. Do we see that the current level is the same to come in the second half, or to open it, of course, we haven't published the exact numbers, but if you could give some color on that one?

Of course, as you said, we have not opened it, and we will not really open it neither, but I refer a little bit to what Tomi said here before. This is a little bit also tied to how fast can we get new brands in and turned around, generate sales, and so forth.

That we can clearly see that we have seen the worst part of it already.

Okay. Very good.

Then about the covenants. We amended the covenants for the Q2, what is the impact for our financial expenses, and do we see that we can be within the limits in these next quarters?

First to the expenses, this was a minor change to the covenants, the impact to the financial also minor. Going forward then to the quarters to come, it's our biggest quarters coming.

We know also now that quarter two was hard. We had a lot of, to say, movements everywhere, we need to get business moving, get sales in, generate margins, and so forth, further improve net working capital, then it may be doable.

It will be tight, but we believe we can do it.

Do you see that our financing is enough, or do we need to raise some more money?

For the time being, the finance is enough, and we have to remember here also continuing to reduce the net working capital, we release cash every day to the balance sheet or to the cash situation, it's enough for running the business.

Do you see that the communicated, let's say, cleaning of the warehouse, our inventory €2 to €3 million is kind of enough, or can it be something different?

The best estimate we have for the time being is €2 to €3 million, and that we will revisit in the quarters to come if the numbers are differing, but that's the best estimate we have for the moment.

Does it kind of cover all the warehouses that we have or some certain areas?

We go through all warehouses we have, it covers the whole group.

Very good. Then about the financing expenses, there was a decrease in financing costs in Q2.

What was the reason behind that? We have

the main portion of it, of course, if you take first of all, we are paying down our loans year by year, the real interest expense goes down. Then the big impact in quarter two is coming from the exchange rates when loans in foreign currency are reevaluated to the latest date.

Then the impact plus or minus ends up on the financial items side, so that's the biggest portion this time.

Okay. Very good.

Then about the capital expenses, we are almost at the same level now than for the full year last year. Do you expect that the same run rate is going forward with the second half?

Not the same run rate. We have spent a lot during the first half of the year, and as we have communicated earlier, we are investing a lot on the IT side, especially e-com, and the biggest parts of the bills are paid already, so.

Okay. What is the current situation with the e-commerce plan or implementation?

In which countries we have those currently?

E-com is growing everywhere, of course, and we have sort of like electronic ordering payment system within corporation a long time already. However, this new e-com platform, we are starting with the Nordic countries, and gradually then we are expanding it to the all of the group countries.

Okay. What about then if we see that the tightening balance position is kind of a bit harder, does it have some negative impact to our let's say operations overall, daily operations?

You mean the e-com part?

You mean the e-com part? No, overall.

Of course, when we look at our business, the building blocks or the cornerstones, they have not changed. What our customers are expecting from us is having a wide and very reputable brand portfolio, and that we have.

They are expecting us to have very good availability, which we do have, and also very competitive prices. These fundamentals have been in the business, and they are remaining in the business.

Of course, all the time we need to renew our portfolio, not necessarily bringing new brands as such, but of course within the brands, of course the portfolio is renewing all the time, and we need to be then of course very clever how we ramp down and ramp up the new products in order that we keep our inventory levels on a sensible level.

Okay. Good.

Thanks. Then if we have few words about the guidance, it reflects pretty weak second half.

What are the kind of the building blocks that are taking down the performance in the second half?

As I mentioned, overall the France situation, the situation as it is today was even more severe than we earlier anticipated, and what I explained regarding the corrective actions and measures, which I truly believe are helping a lot, but the time is running out for this fiscal year, we have only 4 and 1/2 months to go. All of these good things that Jean-Marc and the team are putting together, they will take some time before we will see the financial results.

Already then on the first quarter of the next year, I'm much more positive about how the financials will look like.

Very good. Then if we go back to the let's say cleaning the inventory, we expect in the €2 to €3 million for nonrecurring costs, how much of this has cash flow impact?

That's a good question. Of course, when we already have it in stock, it does not have a negative cash impact.

It will have to some extent a positive cash impact. Depends on what we can do with the obsolete stock.

Yes. There are a few questions about the let's say optimizing the network levels, or inventory levels.

Could you give some practical examples how we are going to do it, and what are kind of the

As I mentioned, even within the same brand, we for example used to take some of the tires from the Far East, and we have switched to using their European warehouses, which enables us to shorter replenishment times, which means smaller lot sizes, smaller inventory levels, without jeopardizing the availability. Clearly, this is sort of like very basic things in logistics, that when you have a shorter replenishment times, you do not need that great crystal ball where you can forecast the future, but you can react more agile to the existing situation without really jeopardizing the availability.

This is just one example. Then, of course, as we are in a seasonal business, and we need to remember that in some cases, we have a very long lead time.

We have taken into use some AI tools to improve our capability to utilize the year-on-year demand, as well as the existing inventory levels, as well as the projected sales, as well as the latest input from our sales teams, to consolidate to the best possible optimal ordering sizes. A lot of things to do.

Some of them are, I would say, very old-fashioned things, but still very valid, and some of are the state-of-the-art new things with the AI, etc.

Okay. Very good.

I think we have gone through the main questions, and there are many kind of duplicated questions. Maybe you could, Tomi, still summarize and have the closing words for this first half and, let's say, give some light still to remind how we are going to forward.

Thanks, Pellervo. In a nutshell, disappointing first half, both in terms of the sales and profitability.

We are taking the actions in three main categories. We are strengthening our market position in Nordics, we are restoring profitable growth in France under the new leadership, and then we are very strongly focusing on our networking capital and cash flows.

For that, we are absolutely sure that we will get back to the growth path and profitability path, but it will take some time, and therefore, the guidance for the rest of this fiscal year is not more positive than it is at the moment.

Very good. Thank you, Tomi and Kai, and thank you also for the audience participating this webcast, and we will come back then with the third quarter result on 2nd of July.

Thank you very much, and have a nice day.